International Gamer’s Day: a niche hobby that came to dominate the entertainment industry

And electronic entertainment has become one of the fastest growing industries in its field today. Already in 2025 it was estimated that the video game industry generated US$184 billion annually, almost double that of the movie industry (US$33.9 billion) and music (US$28.6 billion) combined.

The number of gamers has also seen an exceptional increase and by 2024 it was estimated that there would be a total of 3.32 billion gamers globally, approximately 40% of the population. This resounding increase has been thanks in large part to the rise of smartphones, with the population that plays on this platform reaching 2.85 billion.

The industry has also found fertile soil in Peru and according to a study by Kantar IBOPE Media published in August 2025, 57% of Peruvians connected to the internet play video games, with a considerable percentage, 37%, playing at least four times a week.

Another study, titled Knowing the Peruvian Gamer 2025 by Publicis media Perú, puts the figure even higher, pointing out that 75% of Peruvians play at least one video game a weekwith 17% playing one daily. This shows that, in recent decades, it has abandoned its niche and even socially unacceptable place to become an activity in which the majority of the population participates.

But it’s not all about ‘Easy’ difficulty for the industry, which faces considerable problems ahead, as demonstrated by the closures of numerous studios in recent years, most recently by Microsoft.

In a recent conversation with Álvaro Iparraguirre, coordinator of the Animation and Video Games specialty at the Faculty of Communication at the University of Lima, he told us that the video game industry is currently going through a broad transformation process.

“The pandemic was a kind of bubble for video games,” explained the researcher in conversation with El Comercio. Confinement triggered the consumption of digital entertainment and led large publishers to assume that this growth would be permanent, so they began to hire more staff, open new studios and invest billions of dollars in increasingly ambitious projects.

However, the market ended up returning to normal, and with the end of isolation requirements, people’s consumption habits changed again. As a result, many of the expectations created during those years began to crumble and companies that had expanded their workforces found themselves with lower revenues than projected and embarked on a wave of adjustments that continues to this day.

Added to this is a considerable price increase across all consoles, caused by the increased demand for high-tech components such as video cards and RAM by data centers, in turn driven by the meteoric rise of the artificial intelligence industry. The examples have been clear, with both PlayStation and Xbox announcing considerable increases in the price of their consoles in recent months.

One last challenge to highlight, although certainly not the last one that stalks this industry, is that of the digitalization of video games, recently exemplified by the impact caused by the announcement that PlayStation will stop manufacturing physical discs for its games starting in 2028. But these signs of rejection seem to have done little to change the course of the company, which indicates that the vast majority of game purchases now occur in digital markets.

We still do not see the consequences of this decision, nor how it will affect the industry going forward, but at least one of its effects is occurring at this moment with a boycott against PlayStation that began on August 23 and will last until the 30th of the month.