Presentation: Key Gaming Industry Trends and Market Overview
Presenter: Wanda Meloni, President & Senior Technology Analyst, DFC Intelligence
Key points:
- Gaming is a $47 billion global market.
- Console gaming alone is estimated to be $27 billion in size.
- PC online games is a $6.5 billion industry. Projected to be $13 billion by 2012.
- Online MMOGs is a $3.5 billion industry.
- Casual gaming is a $1.5 billion industry.
- Nintendo doing better than expected while PS3 not expected to break-even. Sony can’t hold on to its 67% marketshare (with PS2) and will eventually come down to about 50% marketshare.
- World of Warcraft is an incredibly popular and successful MMORPG. Earned $600 million in revenue in ’08, with 11 million users. Sells for $50 retail + $15/month.
- BigFish, a casual gaming company, earned $100 million in ’08 revenue. Business model orginally was to offer free, ad-supported games but moving on to digital distribution / ‘try-before-you-buy’ and subscription.
- Casual games
- team size: 25
- cost: $75k – $300k
- time: 6 months
- AAA games
- team size: about 100
- cost: $15 – $30 million
- time: 2-3 yrs
- MMOGs
- team size: starts at 100 – 450
- cost: $15 – $25 million + $500k annual cost for servicing users
- time: 3-5 yrs
- Regional perspective
- North America – strong diversity; sports, action, first person games more popular
- Europe – more cost conscious, similar to North American gaming market otherwise
- Japan – console based
- Korea/China – MMOGs are more popular.
- Canada’s gaming development industry
- Montreal – 80+ game companies including EA and Ubisoft affiliate studios
- Vancouver – 100+ game companies, strong affiliate studios.
