North America makes up 7% of gaming population, but accounts for 27% of spending

Newzoo's 2023 games market report illustrates just how important North America is for the interactive entertainment industry.

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A bit ago, Sony raised the price of its PlayStation 5 console in basically all worldwide regions except for the U.S. There's a good reason for that: North America, including the U.S., is among the top-spending geographies on the planet.

Analyst firm Newzoo recently published its video games industry market report for 2023, and the data is particularly interesting given the current economic climate. Gaming is set to make $184 billion revenues in 2023, excluding games hardware and betting segments. Elsewhere in the report, Newzoo compares the amount of gamers per region, and cross-referencing this data with regional spending delivers eye-opening results.

According to the data, North America has 237 million consumers who play video games. The region represents just 7% of the worldwide gaming population of 3.381 billion. Most of gaming's population, or 1.789 billion people, are in the APAC region which includes India, China, Japan, Australia, and a multitude of other Asia-Pacific countries.

Despite the region's smaller playerbase, North American gamers are big spenders. Consumers in North America are expected to spend $50.6 billion on games (excluding hardware) throughout 2023. This is 27% of the total worldwide spending on video games, and represents a per-consumer spend of $213.

APAC, unsurprisingly, is expected to make the bulk of revenues, or $84.1 billion throughout 2023. This would put the APAC gamers-to-spending ratio at about $47 per user, roughly calculated.

"In 2023, the global games market will generate revenues of $184.0 billion, representing a +0.6% year-on- year growth, despite challenging macroeconomic factors," Newzoo writes in the report.

"We can see that most regions will enjoy healthy game revenue growth in 2023. The West's appetite for console gaming is driving growth in Western markets. To that end, North America's games revenues will grow +1.7% to hit $50.6 billion, while Europe's will grow +0.8% to reach $33.6 billion. Together, these two regions will account for 46% of 2023's global games market revenues."