Rose Garalde
Video games are an addiction to young teens and adults. The number of games and gaming companies has increased tremendously over the years. Backed by the current Covid-19 pandemic, E-sports and E-gaming witnessed a boom like never before. Game sales and the number of players turning towards professional gaming are outstanding.
We list down some of the most popular and biggest names in video game development. These companies have the highest revenue, sales and some of their games have set records.
Standing at number one on this list is none other than Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE). The biggest video game console manufacturing company in the world. The company began in November 1993, Tokyo, with the first Playstation gaming console. PlayStation till today is rated as the bestselling gaming console of the world.
As a subsidiary of Sony, SCE headquarters is currently located in San Mateo, California. The company’s president is Andrew House and Shawn Layden holds the king position of the Company’s global CEO. The company made a booming 20.8 billion in revenue in 2018 from its sales of gaming consoles. Although SCE boasts some very popular games such as Spiderman, The last of Us and God of War, SCE’s main revenue comes from the sales of its gaming consoles. The most popular consoles by SCE are:
• PlayStation
• PlayStation 2
• PlayStation 3
• PlayStation 4
• PlayStation Vita
Nintendo is an old player in the gaming industry, considering it was around the time even before when computers were made. In late 1970 Nintendo began from Kyoto, Japan and distributed its first console Odyssey. The founder of the company is Fusajiro Yamauchi. In 1981, Nintendo released Donkey King which later inspired the world-famous Mario character. Nintendo obviously is more famous for its console rather than games.
Nintendo is the world’s largest video game company by revenue, with almost a net value of over USD 85 Billion. Some of the most notable video game by this company are:
• Mario
• Pokémon
• The legend of Zelda
Nintendo is now a company with subsidiaries in the entire world. With 130 years in the industry Nintendo is almost now a legacy company.
Video game Company, Mojang, was founded in 2009 by game programmer Markus Persson. Mojang was a small enterprise that turned huge and gained quite a reputation. The company headquarters is located in Stockholm, Sweden. Mojang in itself is a very inspiring story of Markus and how he turned the company into the hit it is today. The story begins with Minecraft. The early version of Minecraft was released in 2009. The game was so popular that Persson turned Mojang into a game development company. Minecraft became a hit as soon as it was released. It was Mojang’s most well-known titles to ever release, reaching over ten million registered accounts in just two years.
Mojang reported revenues of 2.069 billion in 2014. However, Mojang was acquired by Microsoft in 2014 for 2.5 billion.
Some of the company’s video games include:
• Cobalt
• Minecraft
Minecraft sold 176 million copies at its time of writing, making it the second best-selling video game of all time.
Electronic Arts or more commonly known as EA is situated in Redwood City, California. The company was founded in 1982 by Trip Hawkins and its current CEO is Andrew Wilson. It is one of the oldest companies which still stands strong today. EA is very famous for its sports video games. EA also owns the Swedish games company DICE and is now the sole distributor of the Star Wars series. EA’s total net worth is about $22.90 billion. In 2018 they made a record-breaking $5.1 billion in revenue coming very close to the revenue Nintendo makes.
EA’s biggest hit is the FIFA 2020 which is the company’s best-seller. Along with FIFA, EA also made video games and mobile versions of the NFL and NBA. The most famous video games produced by this company are:
• Army of Two series
• Battlefield series
• FIFA series
• The Simpsons series
• Star wars series
Activision Blizzard was formed in 2008 with its headquarters in Santa Monica, California. Initially, these were two separate companies Activision and Blizzard. Even when they were separate they had quite the title to themselves. Activision was Tony Hawk’s franchise and was the maker of the famous Call of Duty series. The popularity of this game can be gauged by the fact that global competitions are held where professional gamers participate to win millions in cash prize. Blizzard was more of a multi-player game company and is the creator of the famous game, World of Warcraft.
The two companies merged in 20008 and continued their journey of popular games under the Chairman, Brian Kelly. Activision Blizzard made it to the Fortune 500 and became the third gaming company in history to make the list, after Atari and Electronic Arts.
Activision Blizzard reported generating $7.5 billion in revenue in 2018.
The company produced some of the best video games, among them are:
• Call of duty series
• Crash Bandicoot series
• Spyro the dragon series
• Tony Hawks series
