Top-rated games in 2017 included Madden NFL 18, NBA 2K18, NBA Live 18, WWE 2K18, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Persona 5, Divinity: Original Sin II and Horizon Zero Dawn. One of the most influential games of 2017 was PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, which was released in early access for personal computers in March 2017 and by the end of the year had sold 30 million units,[1] breaking several concurrent player count records and established the battle royale genre. The highest-grossing game of the year was the mobile game Honor of Kings, known as Arena of Valor internationally. Considerable debate was held over the use of loot boxes in video games and whether they constituted gambling, coming to a head with the release of Star Wars Battlefront II.
According to analyst firm Newzoo, the video game industry had $116.6 billion in global revenues, a 10% growth from 2016. This growth was primarily driven by mobile gaming, as 43% ($50.4 billion) of those revenues came from this sector, a growth of 23.3% from 2016. Of the remaining, 29% (US$33.3 billion) came from consoles hardware and games, and 28% ($32.3 billion) from personal computer games.[8] SuperData similarly estimated the global video game market in 2017 was around $108.4 billion, driven heavily by free-to-play mobile and computer games.[9] Analyst firm Sensor Tower, which tracks revenue within the mobile industry, reported that of the $58.6 billion in total revenues in 2017, $48.3 billion came from mobile games.[10]
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