What is the #1 gaming company?

Tencent is the biggest gaming company by revenue, and it isn't even close. They pull in over 200 billion kroner a year from games alone, which is more than Nintendo and Sony combined. The reason it feels wrong is that they don't make the games you play. They own Riot Games outright, so League of Legends is theirs, and they own a massive chunk of Epic Games, which means Fortnite too. They also hold big stakes in Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard. Think of them as the landlord of gaming rather than a developer. They collect rent from basically everything, even when your name never appears on the box.

The big three people usually mean are Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft. Those are the console makers, so they're the ones with the recognisable brands and the flagship exclusives. That's why they dominate the conversation even though their numbers are smaller than Tencent's. If you're talking about the companies people actually associate with games, that's the trio.

As for a top five list, it depends on what you count. By pure revenue it goes Tencent, Sony, Microsoft, Apple and Google. Apple and Google are huge on mobile, but nobody thinks of them as gaming companies because they don't make hardware or big exclusives. By reputation or cultural impact, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft would sit on top, with Valve and Epic coming after. The lists in those videos bounce around because they're measuring different things.

The real trick is remembering that biggest doesn't mean best. Tencent is the biggest because they own everything, not because they make anything you'd necessarily love.

Tencent is the biggest, full stop. If you want the console makers, it's Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft. The top five by revenue would be Tencent, Sony, Microsoft, Apple and Google, but Apple and Google only sneak in because of mobile.

BRIEF: The longest single-player game is The Longing, which takes 400 real days to finish. But if you mean endless, it's Minecraft or WoW. I once clocked 4,000 hours on Europa Universalis IV, over 160 days of my life gone, and that's just one strategy game. The most expensive to make was Star Citizen, over 4 billion kroner in crowdfunding, though a copy of Super Mario Bros. sold for 5 million at auction.

That 9600-hour figure is World of Warcraft, maxing every character and achievement. Over a year of straight playing, and that's by design. I sank 300 hours into Lineage II in a single month back in 2007 before I realised I was the product, not the customer.