In the past Corona year, more and more people in Germany played on their smartphones and often spent additional money for it.
In 2020, 22.6 million people took their smartphones to play, as the game association announced on Wednesday.
The data was collected by the market research company GfK.
The smartphone thus expanded its lead as the most popular gaming platform.
In second place, the consoles (17.2 million players) ousted the PC (15.2 million), which is now in third place.
Game consoles were also particularly popular in retail.
Both Nintendo's Switch, which has been available since 2017, and the two new models PlayStation 5 from Sony and Xbox Series X / S from Microsoft, which were released towards the end of 2020, were sold out in many places.
The tablet computer landed behind in fourth place with 9.9 million players.
Games sales increase by a third
"Smartphones were able to particularly benefit from the strong interest in games last year," said Game Managing Director Felix Falk.
"The reason for this is clear: the devices are usually already available and the range of game apps is huge." In addition, most of the titles are offered as free-to-play games, so that everyone can start playing quickly and free of charge .
The great interest in the games also increases the economic importance of the industry.
The German games market saw a significant leap in sales in 2020: Overall, sales of around 8.5 billion euros were achieved with computer and video games and the associated hardware.
This corresponds to a growth of 32 percent compared to the previous year.
With game consoles, gaming PCs and accessories, more than 3.2 billion euros were turned over. That is an increase of 26 percent. The sub-market for computer and video games grew even faster: 5.2 billion euros were generated with the purchase of games, in-game and in-app purchases, subscriptions and fees for online services. This increased this part of the market by 36 percent.