K-Game Rapidly Rising in Emerging Markets like Brazil, India, and Saudi Arabia... Increasing Usage Time Trends

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The usage time of Korean games has been found to be increasing mainly in emerging countries such as Brazil, India, and Saudi Arabia.

According to the '2023 Survey on Korean Game Users in Overseas Markets' published on the 8th by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Creative Content Agency, the average usage time of Korean games among all survey participants was 2 hours 48 minutes on weekdays and 3 hours 39 minutes on weekends. The survey investigated the overall gaming behavior of 9,200 Korean game users aged 15 and older residing in 18 countries across four global regions.

In countries classified as emerging markets such as Brazil, India, and Saudi Arabia, the average usage time of Korean games was found to be the highest on both weekdays and weekends. For PC and online games, Brazil had the longest usage time on weekdays (3 hours 39 minutes) and weekends (4 hours 39 minutes). For mobile games, on weekdays, India (3 hours 21 minutes) ranked first, followed by Brazil and Saudi Arabia (3 hours 14 minutes each). On weekends, the order was India (4 hours 3 minutes), Indonesia (4 hours 2 minutes), Brazil (4 hours), and Saudi Arabia (3 hours 59 minutes).

The average monthly expenditure on Korean games was analyzed to be $42.47. By country, China ($74.47) and the United Arab Emirates ($63.28) ranked highest. The United Arab Emirates, included in the survey for the first time this year, spent an average of $73.42 on Korean mobile games, significantly exceeding the overall mobile game average of $42.17.

The main reason for enjoying Korean games was that "the games are interesting and fun." Regarding reasons for not enjoying Korean games, for PC and online games, the largest share was "no one around to play with" (23.4%), while for mobile games, it was "lost simple interest" (21.5%). The biggest obstacle to using Korean games was "slow game connection/server speed," which was the highest response for both PC/online and mobile games.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.