Irvine Tops List of Best Cities for Video Gamers

Eight California Cities Among Best Cities for Video Gamers

The video game industry, which saw huge sales gains through all of 2020, isn’t seeing any sign of a slowdown as vaccines begin to roll out and communities begin to lift restrictions, according to Fortune.

Brick-and-mortar sales hit $5.6 billion in March, according to the NPD Group, an 18% increase over a year ago. In the first quarter, consumers spent $14.9 billion, a 30% increase over the first three months of 2020.

Much of that was driven by hardware sales as consumers still scramble to find a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X. Hardware sales were up 47% to $680 million—a record figure for March. The Nintendo Switch was the bestselling system in terms of units sold. Sony’s PS5 made the most in dollars spent.

With this year’s video game hardware sales up 81% compared to the previous year, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on 2021’s Best Cities for Gamers.

To determine the best places to be a serious gamer, WalletHub compared the 100 largest cities across 22 key indicators of gamer-friendliness. The data ranges from average internet speed to video-game stores per capita.

Top 20 Cities for Gamers

1. Irvine, CA
2. Austin, TX
3. San Francisco, CA
4. Seattle, WA
5. Orlando, FL
6. Anaheim, CA
7. Fremont, CA
8. San Diego, CA
9. Washington, DC
10. San Jose, CA
11. Los Angeles, CA
12. Raleigh, NC
13. Oakland, CA
14. Plano, TX
15. Madison, WI
16. Durham, NC
17. Denver, CO
18. Atlanta, GA
19. Portland, OR
20. New York, NY

Best vs. Worst

• Las Vegas has the most video-game stores per square root of the population, 0.031378, which is 26 times more than in Boston, the city with the fewest at 0.001209.
• Irvine, California, has the highest average download speed, 89 Mbps, which is 3.6 times higher than in Buffalo, New York, the city with the lowest at 25 Mbps.
• Gilbert, Arizona, has the highest share of households with a broadband connection, 95.80 percent, which is 1.5 times higher than in Detroit, the city with the lowest at 64.40 percent.
• Winston-Salem, North Carolina, has the cheapest monthly internet cost, $41.88, which is three times cheaper than in Anchorage, Alaska, the city with the most expensive at $123.85.

To view the full report and your city’s rank, please click here.