As an industry custom-built for people to stay indoors, the global video games market has boomed in the last few months, bringing huge profits for the leading gaming companies and their shareholders.
According to data gathered by BuyShares.co.uk, the market capitalization of the six leading video games companies in the world jumped by $354.5bn between January and June. With a 28% growth in the total value of shares in this period, the Chinese IT giant Tencent has witnessed the most significant rise in market capitalization.
Video Games Usage Skyrocketed Amid COVID-19 Outbreak
In January, the market cap of the world’s largest video game company, Tencent, amounted to $49.03bn, revealed MacroTrends data. The coronavirus outbreak triggered a significant drop, with the total value of shares falling to $42.06bn in March. However, statistics show the next month brought a recovery, with the market cap jumping to $50.96bn. The upward trend continued in the last two months, with the total value of shares reaching $62.20bn last week, a $13.17bn increase in six months.
Founded in 2008 by the merger of US gaming companies Activision and Blizzard Entertainment, Activision Blizzard generated $6.5bn in revenue last year. Statistics indicate the market capitalization of the California based gaming company best known for its famous game series Call of Duty, amounted to $45.33bn at the beginning of 2020. Since then, this figure jumped to $58.75bn, a $13.42bn rise between January and June.
The world’s largest software company and the third-largest video game company, Microsoft, also witnessed a surge in the total value of shares in the last six months. The company’s gaming revenue is primarily generated by Xbox One sales. However, Microsoft also develops video games itself or owns studios that do. An excellent example is the Swedish video game studio Mojang, owned by Microsoft, which is known for creating one of the most popular games in history, Minecraft.
Statistics show that the Microsoft market capitalization surged by $311.73 bn in the last six months, growing from $1.21trn In January to $1.52trn last week.
Electronic Arts, Nintendo, and Sony Combined Market Cap Jumped by $16.27bn
Electronic Arts, an American video game company known for Battlefield series, FIFA Series, Medal of Honor series, NBA Series, and Star Wars series, also witnessed a significant growth in the combined value of shares in the last six months. Statistics indicate that between January and June, the market cap of this gaming company jumped by $6.25bn, reaching $38.36bn last week.
Nintendo, the fifth video games company on this list, has seen its value of shares rising from $50.25bn in January to $55.93bn last week, an 11% jump in the first half of the year. Statistics show the company made $11.1bn from sales of Nintendo Switch last year, the most significant part of its revenue. This figure is expected to rise by the end of 2020, with the Nintendo Switch sales booming amid coronavirus lockdown.
However, the company also develops many successful video game series itself. In the middle of the COVID-19 lockdown, Nintendo released its new hit “Animal Crossing: New Horizons”, and reported selling 13.41 million copies in its first six weeks.
Another Japanese tech giant, Sony, saw its market cap grew by $4.34bn in the first half of 2020, rising from $83.56bn in January to $87.9bn last week. In 2019, the company reported $20.3bn in gaming revenue, with most of it generated from PlayStation 4 sales.