Report Finds that Half of China’s 600+ Million Gamers are Now Female

The China Gaming Industry Annual Conference took place on Christmas day, and the “2019 China Gaming Industry Report” is out. Among the report’s findings are that women now account for a solid 46 percent of China’s gamers, indicating that it might be time to ditch the “nerdy gamer dude” cliché.

Out of approximately 640 million total Chinese video game users, 300 million are female. One reason for this number is China’s mobile-focused gaming industry, functioning on a platform that is common across genders instead of on video game consoles which traditionally skew male.

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The total number of gamers represents an increase of 2.5 percent from 2018. Other data from the report include an overall gaming industry revenue increase of 7.7 percent to 230.88 billion RMB (about 33 billion USD), a mobile gaming revenue increase of 18 percent to 158.1 billion RMB (about 22.6 billion USD), and an esports revenue increase of 13.5 percent to 94.73 billion RMB (about 13.5 billion USD).

According to the report, mobile gaming accounted for nearly 70 percent of total gaming revenue in 2019, and role-playing was the most popular type of game, beating out categories such as strategy, card, casual, and shooting.

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The report comes on the heels of a momentous year for Chinese gaming. FunPlus Phoenix, a Chinese League of Legends team, won the LoL Worlds 2019 championship, and Shanghai played host to the International Dota 2 Championships, the world’s largest esports event. There were also notable technological breakthroughs — earlier this year, Chinese tech companies NetEase and Huawei joined forces to accomplish the first use of ray tracing in mobile game graphics.

While the government has enacted restrictions aimed at curbing excessive gaming among minors, this year also saw Chinese gamers given access to a more diverse range of content, as Nintendo’s Switch console finally entered the market, and Chinese regulators gave the green light for a wide selection of new and previously banned games.