Chinese gamers outnumber US citizens

Market research company EEDAR say that the number of gamers in China surpasses the total number of citizens in the United States.

Speaking on a panel at the 2014 Games Marketing Summit in San Francisco, EEDAR said its research showed that there are 517 million gamers living in China. The US has a population of 317 million, meaning that Chinese gamers outnumber the US population at a ratio of 1.6 to 1.

Bringing the figure closer to home, China has 10-times as many gamers as their are people living in South Africa, with SA’s population sitting at 51 million.

This is despite a 13-year console ban in China, and the Chinese government’s recently announced laws which will govern the games that can be released in the country.

Some additional fact about the 517 million Chinese gamers:

147 million are “core” gamers;
28% play more than 1 hour per day;
9.7% have spent money;
Core genres = 70% of revenue.

Gaming piracy is a huge problem in Asia, and these statistics are unlikely to affect the direction gaming development will take. Robot Entertainment CEO Patrick Hudson recently said the decision to make the new Orcs must Die! title free-to-play was due to the fact that “you’re not going to get people paying for downloads in Asia and Russia”.