The gaming market continues to expand. Are gaming-related stocks a good buy?

When a global hit is born, the stock price reacts immediately, and if you have a strong IP, you can expect sustainable growth.

The game market continues to expand its users worldwide. Nowadays, games can be enjoyed not only on home game consoles, but also on smartphones, PCs, and tablets, and game centers are also popular as amusement facilities for enjoying the extraordinary. Game-related stocks are attracting attention as this market grows.

The size of the domestic game market is positive

The size of the home game market in store sales and mail order in 2022 is approximately 209.7 billion yen, 103.4% of the same period last year, for hardware, approximately 165 billion yen, 104.1% of the same period last year, and a total of over 374.8 billion yen, 103.7% of the same period last year. Despite the backlash from the stay-at-home consumption of the previous year, the size of the domestic game market has become positive as powerful new software and shortages of game consoles have been resolved.

On the other hand, the market for smartphone games in Japan is approximately 1.9 trillion yen (2022), tripling in 10 years. Looking at the bigger picture, the global game market is expected to grow to $184.4 billion (approximately 24 trillion yen) in 2022.

At home, Nintendo's Switch, Sony's PlayStation 5, and Microsoft's Xbox are driving the market, and as smartphones have become more widespread around the world, the smartphone game market is also expanding. The game market is entering a period of further growth.

The boom continues this year. For example, Nintendo's "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Tiakin)" was a huge hit, selling 10 million copies worldwide within three days of its release on May 12, and 1 million copies in Japan in the first week.

The movie "The Super Mario Bros. Movie," released in late April, also grossed approximately $1.3 billion (approximately 180 billion yen) worldwide and over 12 billion yen in Japan as of late June. It has surpassed "Frozen" to become the second-largest animated film in the world.

Nintendo is not alone. Square Enix released "Final Fantasy XVI" on June 22nd, and the first week sales were 3 million worldwide, of which about 330,000 were sold in Japan.

By the way, the number one game in the first half of this year's sales ranking was the aforementioned "Tearkin", and of the top 10, 8 were for the Switch and 6 were Nintendo's own titles. The only third-party title was "Minecraft" in 8th place.

The remaining two were "FF16" for PS5 (4th place) and "Hogwarts Legacy" by Warner Bros. Games (10th place). However, Hogwarts has sold more than 15 million copies worldwide, so it can be said to have been a huge hit globally.

So, with all the big titles out there, how did they affect stock prices?