Asia, MENA gaming revenue to top $100 billion by 2030

Asia and MENA are heading toward a $100 billion gaming market, and mobile is sitting at the center of that climb. Niko Partners now pegs combined revenue at $88.9 billion in 2025, rising to $91.8 billion in 2026 and $103.6 billion by 2030, with the five-year compound annual growth rate set at 3%. Total players in the two regions are expected to approach 2 billion by the end of the forecast, turning this into a scale story as much as a revenue story.

India is the clearest growth engine inside that expansion. The report calls it the fastest-growing market in the group, with an 11% five-year CAGR and more than 500 million players already in the market. Niko Partners also expects India’s mobile player spending to cross $1 billion in 2027, a threshold that matters because it points to a market where localisation, regional live ops and sharper monetisation design should become harder to ignore.

The biggest revenue centers are still China, Japan and Korea, but the way players spend inside those markets is shifting. China’s mini games now account for nearly 20% of mobile game spending, showing how lightweight ecosystems can become major commercial lanes rather than side channels. For publishers, that is a useful signal: the next wave is not only about chasing new installs, but about building formats that keep players inside fast, repeatable spending loops.

The audience mix is changing too. Female players now make up 42% of the player base across Asia and MENA, up from around 40% a year earlier, and that broader base is part of why the region’s growth is spreading beyond the old core markets. Newer expansion areas such as MENA-3, Indonesia and Vietnam are becoming more important in the overall picture, adding fresh demand as the biggest territories continue to mature.

Taken together, the numbers point to a different kind of mobile decade ahead. The market is still getting bigger, but the real prize is shifting toward smarter monetisation, broader demographics and more varied game design in the places where scale is still being added fastest. For mobile publishers, the next $100 billion is not coming from one blockbuster market. It is coming from many smaller wins compounding at once.