Consumer Demand for Digital Learning Games, Simulations Growing Worldwide

Consumer demand for digital learning games and simulations is steadily increasing and expected to rise, a recent report concludes. But that level of interest in using games and simulations does not appear to be as evident in K-12 schools, according to the lead researcher for the study.

The boom in the use of mobile technologies in recent years is a major reason the global market for learning games and simulations is expanding—and likely to continue to do so—during the next several years, according to the analysis by Ambient Insight, a market research firm, which has reported extensively on global trends in education purchasing. Worldwide revenues for game-based learning in 2012 totaled $1.5 billion, in US dollars, and are expected to grow to $2.3 billion by 2017, an 8 percent increase based on the five-year compound annual growth rate, the report says. In North America, the expected growth rate over the next five years for all game-based learning is 10.1 percent, and for mobile “edugames,” it is 15.3 percent. Ambient evaluated simulation-focused learning separately from games-based learning and found that the market for simulations is even bigger—nearly $2.4 billion last year, with growth projected to be 23 percent, to $6.6 billion, by 2017, also based on the compound annual growth rate, which is meant to calculate the growth of investment over time.