Skip to main content
Clear icon
57º

Online gaming one of the big winners of 2020

Some industries have been hit hard by pandemic, but others have actually thrived

The Nintendo Switch was largely sold out during the summer and the holidays and the PlayStation 5 and X Box Series X sold out immediately.

During the pandemic more people began to play video games and more started watching gamers, as livestream services like Amazon’s Twitch and Facebook Gaming logged record growth.

Facebook announced in October it had launched games on Android and it expressed confidence it would continue to grow in 2021 despite the recession and high unemployment. Most companies in the gaming industry are confident that growth will continue into 2021.

Tech giants like Google and Amazon are still investing in cloud gaming services like Stadia and Luna, hoping to join into the console wars dominated by Sony and Nintendo.

Google’s video platform YouTube logged its best year ever in 2020, with more than 100 billion hours in gaming content watched.

The head of YouTube gaming says economic conditions like the recession are “ultimately out of our control” but that the company would continue its strategy of entertaining people next year while vying for their attention spans.

An analyst at Nielsen’s Video Game Arm Super data said they don’t foresee anything sort of a gaming crash due to economic factors. There are a lot of people stuck at home, shifting discretionary spending into gaming.


About the Authors
Max Massey headshot

Max Massey is the GMSA weekend anchor and a general assignments reporter. Max has been live at some of the biggest national stories out of Texas in recent years, including the Sutherland Springs shooting, Hurricane Harvey and the manhunt for the Austin bomber. Outside of work, Max follows politics and sports, especially Penn State, his alma mater.

Gaby has been a news producer since 2019. She graduated from the University of North Texas with a Media Arts degree and previously worked at KIII-TV in Corpus Christi.

Loading...

Recommended Videos