In the letter to shareholders heard ‘round the entertainment world, Netflix famously admitted that it competes with — and loses to — the popular video game Fortnite more than HBO. And while the gargantuan success of that Epic Games blockbuster surely remains an outlier, the subtext is unmistakable: In the knock-down, drag-out competition for users’ screen time, the video gaming industry is booming where yesterday’s entertainment forerunners are lagging, if not outright busting.
The global video game market is projected to see more than $365 billion in revenue for 2023, which is up from almost $320 billion in 2022, according to data from Statista. The gaming industry owes some of that success to its adaptation of tech breakthroughs and its discovery of new business strategies — both of which are also generated internally.
Top Video Game Companies
- Nintendo
- Ubisoft
- Electronic Arts
- The Pokemon Company International
- Activision Blizzard
- PopCap Games
- Epic Games
To get an idea of who’s doing what in an industry that seems to be in perpetual flux, check out these gaming industry innovators.
Gaming Companies to Know
Location: Novato, California
2K is a gaming company that makes interactive games for mobile, computer and console play. Its 2K Sports division includes sport-based titles like NBA 2K23, while its 2K Play division releases titles like Lego 2K Drive. The company operates a testing lab where users known as “playtesters” can play new and existing games and offer feedback to the development teams.
Location: Seattle, Washington
Intercept Games is a gaming development studio that leans toward space, simulation and strategy-based games. Its current major project is the Kerbal Space Program 2 video game, which uses immersive audio content to simulate a rocket launch — and it’s so realistic that some NASA staff have used the program to run experiments.
Location: Chicago, Illinois
Iron Galaxy Studios’ portfolio of video games includes more than 60 different titles, with projects that have been available to play on platforms including PS4, XBOX ONE, Oculus and Nintendo Switch. The company has been helping other major players in the gaming industry port some of their most popular titles, such as Skyrim and Crash Bandicoot, to newer platforms.
Location: Denver, Colorado
PointsBet is an online sports betting marketplace where clients can place wagers on an intricate array of options in sports, including professional basketball, football and baseball. It offers all standard betting options, but its signature proprietary option is “pointsbetting,” a volatile point spread wager that pays out according to the margin of victory or loss. That means the size of the win determines the size of the payout and vice versa.
Location: San Francisco, California
Volley creates voice-controlled games that can be played using an Amazon Alexa or Google Home smart speaker. Its offerings include well-known titles like The Price Is Right, Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Location: Los Angeles, California
Not quite a video game company, but a gaming company nonetheless, Exploding Kittens is the maker of the card game with which it shares a name and describes as a “kitty powered version of Russian Roulette.” More than 11 million Exploding Kittens games have been sold, and other popular products from the company include the pinball-esque A Game of Cat & Mouth, the word-guessing game Poetry for Neanderthals and the word-shouting board game Really Loud Librarians.
Location: Santa Monica, California
Most famous perhaps for massively multiplayer online role-playing games like World of Warcraft, Activision Blizzard also scores highly in digital collectible card games (Hearthstone), first-person shooters (Overwatch) and other genres. They’re also celebrated for some of the most memorable April Fools’ Day pranks in the industry and—get this—handing out steins, shields, swords and helms as service awards.
Location: Cary, North Carolina
As the monoculture continues to fragment, we may never see another Pac-Man-style capital-P phenomenon, but the long-tail success of Fortnite has come awfully close. Separate from that mammoth success, Epic Games — which dates back well beyond the internet era — is looking toward the future with projects like Unreal Engine, a product development suite that includes hyper-realistic design renderings that also have automotive applications.
Location: Redmond, Washington
Nintendo is known both for its games and gaming consoles. With roots dating as far back as the late 1800s, the company first debuted its famous characters Mario and Donkey Kong nearly 100 years later in the 1980s. There are now thousands of titles users can play on Nintendo Switch, including popular Nintendo published games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Location: San Francisco, California
Founded in the 1980s, Ubisoft has released popular gaming franchises like Assassin’s Creed and Rabbids. Xbox and Nintendo Switch are among the platforms where Ubisoft games can be played. The company’s areas of technological expertise include artificial intelligence and cloud gaming.
Location: Paris, France
Gameloft has 190 games in its portfolio with 1.5 million downloads completed daily. For two decades, the company has been developing games for mobile, PC and gaming consoles. Gameloft is known for titles like The Oregon Trail and Dragon Mania Legends.
Location: Sherman Oaks, California
Mythical Games is a team of veteran game and platform developers working together to bring groundbreaking new ideas to market and enhance the gameplay experience. The company is dedicated to playing a part in creating an integrated secondary market built on true ownership of digital assets to bring players, developers and content creators closer together. Mythical Games has been integral in the development of franchises like Blankos: Block Party, Call of Duty, Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft.
Location: Irvine, California
MobilityWare specializes in developing tremendously replayable games for mobile devices and Facebook. The company’s impressive roster of games includes Solitaire, Spider Solitaire, Jigsaw Puzzle and Video Poker, providing users with hours of entertainment without any learning curve.
Location: San Francisco, California
It’s not a gaming company per se, but few outfits are as inextricable from the gaming landscape as streaming platform Twitch. The go-to broadcasting choice for the e-sports community and other gamers, the video platform-meets-social community was acquired by Amazon in 2014 and (per the company) attracts more than 10 million monthly visitors.
Location: New York, New York
This veteran gaming company is one of the most recognizable names in the industry. Take-Two Interactive Software’s two divisions, Rockstar Games and 2K, are responsible for some certified cultural phenomena, including the former’s infamous Grand Theft Auto and the latter’s NBA 2K. Blockbuster Red Dead Redemption 2 is emblematic of the company’s rigorous attention to graphic and motion detail.
Location: Seattle, Washington
DoubleDown Interactive makes classic casino games — everything from blackjack and slots to poker and roulette — for social and mobile platforms. The company started out with the launch of a casino game on Facebook in 2010, and by 2015, was among the top-performing games in the Apple App Store.
Location: Culver City, California
Jam City has produced game adaptations of massively popular tentpole franchises, including Harry Potter and Marvel Avengers titles. They also inked a multi-year deal with Disney to develop games. The developer — which counts the creators of MySpace and a former 20th Century Fox executive among its co-founders — has proven to be a major leader, particularly in the free-to-play social and mobile categories.
Location: Bellevue, Washington
Started by a trio of former Blizzard programmers, this long-running outfit is known for massively-multiplayer-online successes like Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. ArenaNet, a subsidiary of NCSOFT, is also known for incorporating the increasingly popular episodic-update model.
Location: Bellevue, Washington
Bungie has grown from self-described “creepy one bedroom apartment” origins to become worthy of a famous scoop-up by Microsoft. The major tech company acquired Bungie in 2000 and launched the Xbox console with the studio’s mega-hit Halo: Combat Evolved. In the span of just a few years, Bungie left Microsoft, then split from a subsequent Activision partnership and returned to its independent roots.
Location: Irvine, California
Bonfire Studios emerged from stealth in late 2016 after raising $25 million to build a highly anticipated title. The company is staffed with artists, level designers, character developers, animators, UX designers, VFX artists, developers and more, all bringing unique talents to the team with a goal of uniting players in a sense of adventure, exploration and fellowship.
Location: Santa Monica, California
Play Q is an on-the-rise mobile gaming developer. The company rioritizes easy-to-grasp gameplay, colorful graphics, fit-for-all-ages narratives and just-so degrees of familiarity — think puzzles and platforms.
Location: Golden, Colorado
Co-founded by music industry veterans, IllFonic has grown into a leading indie game developer, making its name on tactical titles like Armored Warfare and horror survival games like Friday the 13th: The Game. The company takes strides to maintain an independent spirit even as it continues to grow, and it carefully plans projects with an eye toward the long term, according to top brass.
Location: Burbank, California
The creative force behind Spider-Man, one of the industry’s mega-successes, Insomniac Games earned its name on PlayStation exclusives like Ratchet & Clank and Spyro the Dragon. This gaming company is one of the true major American players in gaming.
Location: Burbank, California
Holding some of the most prime IP this side of Marvel in its portfolio has proven a sound business strategy for this major entertainment company. The game division of Warner Bros. Entertainment, a brand under the Warner Bros. Discovery umbrella, operates hit franchises like Mortal Kombat, which is headed up by Chicago-based subsidiary NetherRealm Studios, and Batman: Arkham, which was launched by London-based wing Rocksteady Studios.
Location: El Segundo, California
Nexon has been in the gaming industry for more than 20 years and has produced dozens of massively multiplayer online role-playing games that are available to users in more than 190 countries. The company’s games can be played on Windows, Xbox, PlayStation and mobile.
Location: Irvine, California
The age of sequels surely extends to the gaming world, and these RPG specialists—launched in 2003 by a team of ex-Black Isle employees—built their name on a couple of better-than-the-original follow-ups: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords and Neverwinter Nights 2. Meanwhile, the well-known crowdfunding success for Pillars of Eternity revealed that Obsidian is adept at maneuvering the long falls that can be endemic to the quicksilver gaming industry.
Location: Westminster, Colorado
Deck Nine Games is an independent video game development company that focuses on creating games that feature narrative storytelling. The company’s titles include graphic adventures Life Is Strange: Before the Storm and Life Is Strange: True Colors.
Location: Redwood City, California
One of the industry’s true powerhouses, EA is proof that quality and quantity need not be mutually exclusive. The EA Sports division is responsible for some of the most iconic sports-games franchises, including FIFA, Madden NFL and NBA Live. EA’s classic non-sports series range from The Sims to Medal of Honor, and its Mobile subsidiary does a reliably good job of putting those hits in your pocket.
Location: Bellevue, Washington
The Pokémon Company International, a subsidiary of The Pokémon Company based in Japan, is primarily responsible for managing aspects of the Pokémon brand, its licensing and its marketing in regions outside of Asia. That includes news, updates and additional information for the brand’s many video games, from Pokemon GO on mobile to Pokemon Snap for Nintendo Switch. The company also handles all aspects of the Pokémon Trading Card Game, the brand’s animated television series, its website and more.
Location: New York, New York
Private Division is a game publishing company that advocates for small game developers, providing them with opportunities to successful launch games commercially and globally. Some titles published by Private Division include Hades from Supergiant Games, OlliOlli World from Roll7 and Disintegration from V1 Interactive.
Location: Madison, Wisconsin
According to its website, Raven Software’s decision to stay rooted in the gaming-industry flyover country of Wisconsin was a conscious choice — one that comes with notable cost-of-living and community perks. As for its game portfolio, highlights include Heretic/Hexen and Soldier of Fortune. It has also notably lent assistance to fellow Activision partners Treyarch and Infinity Ward on Call of Duty entries.
Location: Seattle, Washington
Years before the great Pokémon GO scare of 2016, this geocaching pioneer was already getting gamers outside and GPS-scavenging for treasure. Geocaching has also nurtured a robust network of forums, events and even environmental outreach, encouraging responsible play.
Location: Santa Monica, California
Naughty Dog started in a garage in the late 1980s and eventually grew to become one of the premier American gaming companies, thanks to watershed series like Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter and Uncharted. The company emphasizes cross-studio collaboration between programmers, developers and designers, retaining an indie-style culture while producing award-winning blue chip titles.
Location: San Francisco, California
Zynga has produced many of the most popular social mobile games of all time, with titles including Words With Friends, Farmville and Tiny Royale. The company’s games have been played by over 1 billion users, leading to offices opening throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and India.
Location: Seattle, Washington
Famous in the casual games market, PopCap made its mark with the once-ubiquitous tile-matching Bejeweled series — which, according to its makers, once racked up a sale every 4.3 seconds and has sold in excess of 50 million units. After a post-Plants vs. Zombies acquisition by EA, the developer (which began inside a modest Seattle apartment) remains focused on breezy, grab-and-play fun.
Location: Rockville, Maryland
This three-decade-plus-old powerhouse became a household name on the strength of pioneering RPG series The Elder Scrolls, which boasts worlds so intricate that they necessitated the creation of a “loremaster” job role. Bethesda Softworks has expanded into just about every other genre since then, including sports games, strategy games, shooters and beyond.
Location: Bellevue, Washington
Founded more than 20 years ago by a pair of former Microsoft employees, Valve catapulted to acclaim and popularity with its very first title, the first-person shooter turning point Half-Life. The company has also looked forward to hardware, particularly virtual reality. The team’s early VR breakthroughs infamously helped prompt Mark Zuckerberg to buy into the VR game.
Location: Richardson, Texas
Even the most casual gamers are likely familiar with legacy id titles like Wolfenstein 3D (perhaps the ne plus ultra of RPG), DOOM (which helped usher in the modern multiplayer model) and QUAKE—all of which revolutionized what a PC game could be. The company also pioneered the shareware distribution model.
Location: Woodland Hills, California
Infinity Ward and its marquee series, Call of Duty, remain key revenue generators, now as an Activision subsidiary. The company was launched back in 2002 by a 2015, Inc. breakaway team that had previously worked on Medal of Honor: Allied Assault.
Location: Los Angeles, California
Two decades in, Santa Monica Studio still looks like a visionary. Cases in point: the God of War series has earned more than 190 Game of the Year awards; and the internally produced documentary Raising Kratos, about the tolls of game development.
Location: Austin, Texas
Devolver Digital seeks out and shines a light on games from all over the planet, usually ones with a firmly offbeat sensibility. Examples range from a Swedish-made “violent ballet about friendship, imagination, and one man’s struggle to obliterate anyone in his path at the behest of a sentient banana,” to a turn-based adventure from a scrappy Polish indie about growing and selling weed.
Location: Santa Monica, California
Thatgamecompany’s video game offerings — Sky, Journey, Flower and Flow — focus on “meaningful emotional impact” and “human connection.” Over the years, its games have been featured in exhibits at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and MoMA.