玩家调查：普通玩家的终结

Choose Your Player Acknowledgments The leadership team of Bain & Company’s Global Gaming Sector practice prepared this report,with special direction from Anders Christofferson, partner and Global Gaming Sector lead,and Brandon Rogers, Media practice manager. The authors would like to thank Danielle Schwenker, Aman Sharma, Gunjan Dawar, Shray Arora,Rohan Doomra, Shagun Jain, and Christoffer Karlsmose for their contributions to this work.Thanks also to Heather Clayberg, Jeff Bauter Engel, and the editorial team for their assistance. Gaming Report 2026 Contents Choose Your Player2Gamer Survey: The End of the Average Gamer3AI Won’t Save an Unfocused Game8Gaming’s Personalization Imperative13Game Distribution: Half Your Players Already Buy Direct19 Gaming Report 2026 Choose Your Player The easily defined gamer no longer exists. Gaming has become more global, social, and diverse, whichmakes chasing the average player the costliest mistake in the industry.Playing time and spending havebecome heavily concentrated.But this valuable core of the market isn’t one audience:Preferencesvary widelyacross age and every other dimension we tested. The race is on to win the core. A game built for everyone is now the risky bet. AI won’t rescue these games—it scales the wrong betsas fast as the right ones. The advantage goes to companies that own the relationship with their chosenplayers, understanding each one well enough to personalize what they offer and, increasingly, sellingto them directly. Nearly half of players already buy straight from developers, bypassing the app stores. The next market leaders won’t necessarily win the most players. They’ll win the right ones. Anders ChristoffersonGlobal Gaming Sector Lead Daniel HongLeader of Bain’s GlobalMedia & Entertainment practice Tom RowlandGaming Sector Lead,Americas Anders VidebaekGaming Sector Lead, Europe,the Middle East, and Africa Gamer Survey: The Endof the Average Gamer Supply is exploding as demand fractures. The advantage now belongs to companiesthat pick a lane and serve it well. By Anders Videbaek and Benjamin Sommer At a Glance Today’s players can choose from a practically unlimited games catalog, and their preferencesare divergingNo single “ideal” gaming experience wins more than a quarter of gamers, accordingto Bain’s latest annual surveyOur survey found that spending concentrates among a narrow, identifiable set of players,particularly young content creatorsFor studios, the math has flipped: The broad middle of the market has become the costlyplace to aim A decade ago, a player’s choice of games was bound by what a handful of platforms could stock and whata few dozen studios could ship. That ceiling has been torn off. Tens of thousands of new titles reachdigital storefronts every year from indies through AAA studios. Live-service games captivate playersfor years rather than weeks. User-generated platforms turn every player into a potential supplier, theircontent creation now turbocharged by AI. Gaming Report 2025Gaming Report 2026 The game shelf has become effectively infinite, and choices are multiplying faster than any player’sattention can grow. When supply is scarce, a broadly appealing product can win. When supply is basicallyunlimited, personal fit is everything. That’s the new reality, and it explains why “there is no averagegamer” has become a board-level strategic issue. The demand is there to capture. Three out of four gamers are actively hunting for their next title,according to Bain & Company’s latest annual survey of more than 5,300 gamers worldwide. Most arelooking in categories they already love, not seeking something unfamiliar. The losing move in 2026 istrying to serve all of them. The question every gaming CEO should be asking themselves has morphedfrom “How do we reach more players?” to “Which players do we choose, how do we best engage them,and how do we own the relationship completely?” When supply is basically unlimited, personal fit is everything. Demand has fragmented When we asked gamers to describe the experience they want most, the field split five ways. No singleexperience type surpassed 26% (see Figure 1). Gaming Report 2025Gaming Report 2026 The top-line split is the mild version of the story. The sharp divergence shows up when comparingdifferent cohorts. For example, a third of 13-to-17-year-olds have an appetite for open, user-generatedworlds; that share collapses to 15% or lower among players 50 and older. Preferences diverge widelyby geography as well (see Figure 2). Spending has concentrated As demand has fragmented, playing time and spending have become heavily concentrated. The mostactive players account for almost 60% of all gamers’ total playing time, and the highest-spending groupaccounts for about three-quarters of total spending, according to our survey (see Figure 3). Player fragmentation reads as bad news until you look at where the spending concentrates: amongan identifiable, deeply en