This is how big the gaming market was in 2017

It was a good year for PUBG.

2017 was a pretty big year for gaming, marking the release of huge games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, not to mention hardware like the Nintendo Switch, and now Superdata has provided us with data showing just how big last year was in gaming market, revealing "continued growth of new segments like esports, gaming video content, and virtual reality".

So how big is gaming, really? Well, one third of the people on the planet (so roughly 2.5 billion) play free-to-play games on PC and/or a mobile device, and on top of that we also know that consumers spent $14 billion USD more on mobile games than they did in 2016.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, or PUBG, also had a good year (as if we didn't know that already), generating $712 million in revenue in eight months. Let's not forget that it also helped popularise the Battle Royale subgenre, and inspired Fortnite's Battle Royale mode as well as other games.

In regards to VR, many headsets received price drops in 2017, and "must-have content drove extended reality (XR) revenue up by 37% in 2017". Oculus Rift outsold HTC Vive during 2017 as well, and of course on consoles the PSVR gained attention with games like Resident Evil 7 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR.

Was any of this a surprise to you?