According to the American Time Use Survey, Americans spend an average of 15 minutes daily playing games. That’s more time than Americans spend walking, grocery shopping, or managing their finances.

The gaming industry is evolving rapidly. Every producer wants to involve as many users as possible and offers realistic graphics, new opportunities, and tasks to take advantage of the explosive growth in gaming interfaces made possible by the Internet and smartphones. Producers are also increasing revenue by switching from one-time, pay-to-play models to dynamic gaming experiences based on regular small payments by gamers for new features.

Today’s Viz looks at the bottom lines of game producers based on revenue figures published by Newzoo.com. In general, the size of the gaming market increased by 17 percent* from 2016 to 2017, led by Uzbekistan with 100 percent growth year on year. Only five countries in the top 100—Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Nigeria, and (US territory of) Puerto Rico—experienced a decline in gaming revenue. In addition, according to Newzoo:

The top 5 countries in total gaming revenue—China, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the US—combined account for 69.8 percent of total revenue of top 100 countries worldwide.

In 2017, China had the highest total gaming revenue, at an estimated $32.54 billion, or about one-third of total game revenue worldwide. China’s appetite for gaming is even remarkable given that only about 58 percent of the population has Internet access.

Japan not only recorded the largest game revenue per Internet user in 2017 - roughly $116 - but total revenue grew 13 percent from 2016.

* Calculation based on top 100 countries by game revenues.