World Technology Forum — Gaming Summit

The gaming industry has outgrown the arcade

Interactive entertainment now generates more revenue each year than film and music combined — built by console makers, mobile studios, game engines, esports federations, and, as of this year, a sovereign wealth fund holding 93% of a former Fortune 500 studio. The Gaming Summit gathers the institutions running that economy under one roof.

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$195B+

Combined annual revenue reported across the companies profiled below

Companies, platforms and institutions in the directory

Countries represented at headquarters level

640M

Global esports audience, 2026 (Niko Partners)

The market opportunity

Newzoo's Global Games Market Report 2026, released this month, puts the industry at its highest figure on record — reaccelerating for a third straight year after 2022's slowdown, and growing across every platform and every major region at once.

$213.9B

Global games market revenue, 2026 — up 6.1% year on year

Newzoo's figure covers consumer spending on games software and services — full-game purchases, in-game spending and subscriptions — and deliberately excludes hardware, peripherals, advertising, second-hand trade and gambling. Broader market-research definitions that fold in hardware and adjacent services put total industry-linked spend meaningfully higher; the range across firms reflects differing scope, not disagreement about direction.

Mobile$121.1B · ~3.10B players

Console$46.9B · ~651M players

PC$45.9B · ~977M players

1.94B

Players across Asia-Pacific — the largest gaming audience of any region, growing 4% year on year.

$227

Average annual revenue per North American player — the highest monetisation of any region, against roughly $13 in MENA.

GTA VI

Newzoo's own read: without Rockstar's November launch, 2026 console revenue would be flat to down for the year.

4.07B

Projected global player base by 2029, as growth shifts from acquiring new players to monetising existing ones.

Subscriptions & live services

Xbox Game Pass alone has crossed $5B in annual recurring revenue; live-service monetisation now outweighs one-off full-game sales across every platform.

Cloud streaming

Xbox Cloud Gaming, GeForce NOW and telco-bundled 5G streaming are extending high-fidelity titles to markets and devices that never owned a console.

Generative AI in production

Adopted across the majority of major studio pipelines for asset generation and QA — and, more contentiously, for reactive NPC dialogue that no longer relies on scripted trees.

Monetisation scrutiny

Loot boxes, gacha mechanics and dark-pattern in-app purchases face rising regulatory attention across the EU, UK and parts of Asia — the clearest structural headwind against an otherwise free-to-play-led model.

Ownership · Closed August 4, 2026

The deal reshaping gaming's ownership map

Electronic Arts is now a private company. A consortium of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners completed a $55 billion take-private on August 4, 2026 — the largest all-cash sponsor buyout in history, funded by roughly $36 billion in equity (including PIF's rolled-over 9.9% stake) and $20 billion of debt underwritten by JPMorgan Chase. EA delisted from NASDAQ; shareholders received $210 per share, a 25% premium to the last unaffected price. PIF now holds 93.4% of the company, with Silver Lake at 5.5% and Affinity Partners at 1.1%. The transaction drew sustained scrutiny in Washington over Gulf sovereign ownership of a major US entertainment IP holder and over Affinity Partners' involvement — scrutiny that continued even after CFIUS and EU regulators cleared the deal in July 2026.

$55B

Enterprise value

$210

Cash paid per share

93.4%

Post-close PIF ownership

$20B

Debt, financed by JPMorgan

Directory of global gaming institutions

Forty-eight companies, platforms, federations and regulators spanning the industry from silicon to storefront. Filter by category, or search by name.

Revenue and market-share figures reflect the most recently reported fiscal-year results or credible 2025–2026 industry estimates, compiled from public company disclosures, SEC/regulatory filings and trade press including Wikipedia's List of Largest Video Game Companies by Revenue, Newzoo's Global Games Market Report 2026, GamesIndustry.biz, PocketGamer.biz and company investor-relations releases. Figures marked "est." are third-party estimates rather than disclosed financials. Compiled for Gaming Summit convening purposes as of September 2026 and not intended as investment research.

Summit tracks

Four threads run through the Gaming Summit programme, each mapped to the institutions in the directory above.

Platforms & publishing

Console ecosystems, AAA studios and the regional publishers who dominate the Asia-Pacific market.

Virtual economies & rails

In-game currencies, live-service monetisation and the payment infrastructure underneath them — the natural meeting point with WTFORUM's core agenda.

Esports & competitive infrastructure

Federations, leagues, tournament operators and the streaming platforms that broadcast them to 640 million fans.

Sovereign capital & ownership

What it means for the industry when a sovereign wealth fund becomes a studio's controlling shareholder.