In the first quarter of 2021, Twitch generated 6.3 billion watching hours in total - a new milestone for Twitch as that’s a huge 97% increase compared to the first quarter of 2020. In other words, its viewership almost doubled in one year. Its biggest competitors, YouTube Gaming and Facebook Gaming don’t even come close.

The UK gaming industry has boomed since the start of the first lockdown last year. The UK’s digital and physical game market saw incredible increases in revenue with a 14.5% rise from 2019 to 2020, surpassing £4billion. Over 3 million gaming consoles were sold in the UK, and over half of 13 - 18 year olds now use video games to socialise with friends.

For many businesses, the COVID-19 pandemic was devastating, even resulting in bankruptcy for some. But one sector didn’t suffer the same fate: the gaming industry, which generated a larger revenue than the film industry last year. With so many big players in the gaming mix, who’s doing better than ever right now and who’s bitten off more than they can chew?

Microsoft’s Game Pass is a subscription service that gives subscribers over a hundred high-quality games to play at a reasonable monthly fee. There’s little doubt that it’s generous, so what does it mean for Microsoft’s strategy and how did it come about?

Microtransactions - or Loot Boxes - are the “big evil” in the video game industry right now. Gamers of Star Wars Battle Front 2 did the maths and found it would take a total of 4,500 hours of gaming or spending $2,100 to unlock everything in the game.