The Most Lucrative Gaming Companies

The companies with the highest gaming revenues are also those that don't rely on just one pillar for their financial success. According to company data, Japanese multimedia company Sony, for example, made the equivalent of around $27 billion from games in their fiscal year 2022 - almost twice as much as most of each of the remaining companies in last year's top 8.

Comparably good results were achieved by the Chinese company Tencent, which came in first among the companies with the highest games sales in 2021. This past year, international and domestic games accounted for about 59 percent of revenue in the Value Added Services segment. This segment includes social media as well. Video games accounted for about 31 percent of Tencent's total revenue.

Despite making headlines with the most expensive planned takeover in the video game cosmos by far and the success of its subscription and cloud models, Microsoft fails to live up to Sony's and Tencent's revenues. The United States company, which owns Xbox, one of the best-known brands in the games sector, reported sales of around $16 billion in the gaming segment in its last annual report. Similar figures were also achieved by the Asian companies Nintendo, which is known for the Mario, Pokémon and Zelda game series, Netease and Sea. Activision Blizzard, the target of Microsoft's acquisition plan, reached $7.5 billion in annual revenue in 2022.

Google and Apple were excluded from this ranking since they don't report their gaming segment revenues separately. The associated revenues are generally not generated from their products but from store fees on in-app purchases and paid mobile games. Analysts at Newzoo estimated the games revenues of Google and Apple in 2021 at 13 and 15 billion US dollars respectively.