There are undoubtedly many gamers in Malaysia, but the question is, what’s our population like? What are our gaming and spending habits like? Games market analyst site Newzoo has the numbers, collected in collaboration with gamescom asia. And they are quite fascinating.

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The first is that we spent about US$673 million (~RM2.7 billion) on games last year. This makes us one of the biggest gaming markets in Southeast Asia, but Newzoo stopped short of an exact ranking number. Unsurprisingly, most of the urban online population are gamers, but it’s unclear if this also means that most gamers reside in the urban areas.

Also unsurprisingly, the mobile platform is the most popular among Malaysians, with 75% of gamers playing on mobile devices. This is followed by PC at 66%, and console at 55%. Though oddly enough, the gender divide is also surprisingly small, which you can see from the graph below.

On the flip side, most surprising of all is the fact that 87% of gamers spend money on microtransactions. This may have something to do with the top-played titles. In the past six months, 50% of gamers played Candy Crush Saga, while 46% played its spin-off, Candy Crush Soda Saga, both notorious for their monetisation practices.

It’s also interesting that it classes the mobile MOBA, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, as a strategy game. It’s also the most popular title in its category, surprising no one at all. There are a few other interesting facts about our local gamers available on the Newzoo page, linked below.

(Source: Newzoo)

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