Sales revenue year-over-year growth rate hits 10-month high; institutions say gaming sector prosperity will continue

What are the key drivers behind the growth of the AI and gaming markets?

Gamma Data released the “February 2026 Monthly Report on China’s Gaming Industry.” The data shows that in February 2026, China’s domestic gaming market had actual sales revenue of 33.231 billion yuan, a month-on-month increase of 2.35% and a year-on-year increase of 18.96%. The year-on-year growth rate reached a 10-month high; the actual sales revenue of China’s client-based games reached 8.87 billion yuan, up 7.7% month-on-month and 56.75% year-on-year; China’s mobile gaming market’s actual sales revenue was 22.729 billion yuan, up 0.48% month-on-month and 9.05% year-on-year; China’s self-developed games’ overseas sales revenue reached $2.114 billion, up 1.77% month-on-month and 40.46% year-on-year.

Hua Jin Securities’ Wang Yansen stated that the market continues the steady trend since the end of 2025, with leading evergreen games continuing to serve as a stable source of revenue. The good user activity and paying performance after some new releases have supported short-term growth. Dongwu Securities’ research report pointed out that in 2025, many blockbuster new games from various companies focused on long-term operation categories. Coupled with the deepening trend of “boutique” and “cultural export” in the industry, the outlook for the gaming sector in 2026 remains optimistic, with continued product cycle dividends.

According to the Caixin News thematic database, among related listed companies:

Perfect World’s “Yihuan” completed its final testing during the Spring Festival. According to the company’s official website, the number of reservations exceeded 25 million. For comparison, the highest reservation numbers before the launch of “Genshin Impact” and “Ming Chao” were 20 million and 32 million, respectively.

Giant Network launched several quality games in the PC and mobile online gaming markets. Its game “Supernatural Operations Team” announced on February 2nd that daily active users (DAU) surpassed 10 million.

(Caixin News)