How large is the online and mobile games market?

Change and growth in the gaming market

Online and mobile gaming are growing rapidly to become ever more powerful and influential markets.

• In the US, although total consumer spending on games is flat at around $21.6 billion, the online gaming segment is growing (Source: iQU, accessed 1/12/11)
• Juniper research predicts that in 2012, online, mobile and physical markets will begin to fuse (source: Juniper research, accessed December 2011). They have previously predicted that by 2015, mobile games revenues would surpass $11 billion globally (source: marketwire.com, November 30th 2011).
• In 2010, Haruhiro Tsujimoto, Capcom president, “pointed to downloadable games, new gaming devices such as Apple’s iPad and the rise of social gaming on platforms such as Facebook as reasons for a gradual decline in Capcom’s traditional packaged game market” (source: Financial Times, accessed 1/12/11).

Virtual Goods

• The virtual goods market is worth $6 billion globally (source: Inside Network annual report)
• The global total spend on virtual goods and subscriptions is expected to reach $4.1 billion by 2016, where the largest market by far is the Far East and China (source: Juniper Research, accessed December 2011)

Social gaming

• 41% of US internet users are actively playing games on social networking sites. More than half play social games daily. (source: Kabam’s 2011 Social Gaming Research)
• Over 300 million users play social games every month. (Source: Peter Wexler, accessed 28/11/11)

Mobile web

• 12% of Europeans and 22% in the US access the mobile web at least once a month. In Japan the figure is 47% (source: Social Cast’s mobile affairs infographic)
• Between 2007 and 2010, more than 300,000 mobile applications were released (source: Social Cast’s mobile affairs infographic)

Market indicators like this show the state of the playing field, but don’t forget the importance of bottom-up forecasting.

Source: Gamesbrief