The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (Minister Hwang Hee) and the Korea Creative Content Agency (CEO Cho Hyun-rae, hereafter referred to as Konjinwon) announced on the 20th that they had published the ‘2021 Republic of Korea Game White Paper’ , which summarizes the statistics and trends of the domestic and foreign game industry in 2020.
According to Conjin One, the domestic game industry’s sales in 2020 increased by 21.3% compared to the previous year to reach 18.88 trillion won . Exports also amounted to $8.193.56 million (about KRW 9,668.8 billion*), an increase of 23.1% compared to the previous year . *The Bank of Korea’s 2020 annual average trading rate of KRW 1,180.05 applied
Meanwhile, Conjin One predicted that the size of the domestic game market would exceed KRW 20 trillion in 2021 , and that the game industry will continue to grow in the future.
◆ Korean game market reorganized to focus on mobile , mobile games account for 57.4% of the total market
Mobile game sales in 2020 were KRW 10,831.1 billion , accounting for 57.4% of the total game industry sales . PC game sales were 4.9 trillion won (26.0% share), console game sales were 1.92 trillion won (5.8% share), and arcade game sales were 227.2 billion won (1.2% share), respectively.
According to the data, although sales of all game platforms increased year-on-year, mobile games (39.9% growth rate) and console games (57.3% growth rate) in particular drove the overall game market growth. PC game and arcade game sales grew only 2.0% and 1.6% YoY, respectively.
On the other hand, game distribution businesses such as PC rooms and arcade game centers saw a significant drop in sales due to the impact of COVID-19. PC room sales decreased by 11.9% from the previous year to KRW 1.79 trillion, and arcade game rooms decreased by 48.1% to KRW 36.5 billion.
◆ Korea’s game industry ranks 4th in the world , up one place from the previous year
The size of the global game market in 2020 was $209.658 billion, an increase of 11.7% from the previous year. Korea’s share in the global market is 6.9% , surpassing the UK after the US , China and Japan. It ranked fourth , up one place from the previous year . By platform, PC games accounted for 12.4%, ranking third after China and the United States, and mobile games with 10.3%, occupying fourth place after China, the United States, and Japan.
2020 Exports of the Korean game industry increased by 23.1% compared to the previous year to reach $ 8.193.56 million ( about KRW 9,668.8 billion ) . The proportion of exports was in the order of China (35.3%), Southeast Asia (19.8%), Taiwan (12.5%), North America (11.2%), and Europe (8.3%). Imports amounted to 270.79 million dollars (about 319.5 billion won), down 9.2% from the previous year. In addition, as the proportion of exports to total sales in the game industry exceeded 50%, it has firmly established itself as an export-beneficial industry.
‘2021 Republic of Korea Game White Paper’ contains various industry information, including surveys and analysis of domestic game companies and game distribution companies, can be downloaded as
