Polish Games Market Rises To $400M In 2012

PC & MMO Gaming take 48% of money spent by 11.8 million gamers.

New research and analysis by Newzoo indicates that Polish consumer spending on games will be between $350 and $450 million in 2012. The research in Poland zoomed in on the 18.1 million active internet users aged between 10 and 65 and involved over 200 topics across all game business models and platforms. The majority of these consumers, 65% or 11.8 million to be exact, play games. Women represent 44% of all gamers. The share of gamers that spend money on games stands at 53%, slightly lower than in Europe or the US. Newzoo co-operated with local market leader Gry-Online to discuss, benchmark and validate results.

Only 43% of Polish gamers ever plays console games, putting it in last place in terms of popularity when compared to the other online, mobile and PC gaming segments. Still this segment grosses a relative large share of money spent, 25%, when DLC, import and second-hand trade is taken into account. Contrary to Asian and other Emerging markets like Turkey, there is no gaming-cafe tradition offering a cheaper way of playing console games. Poland has a very strong PC gaming tradition which is reflected in the numbers and $120 million annual spent, of which 60% is spent on boxed products and 40% on downloads.

 

MMO Gaming
Victor Kislyi, CEO of Wargaming.net, recently stated the capital of Poland, Warsaw, has the highest density of World of Tanks players in the world. Not surprising in a country where PC and MMO gaming is so popular. Almost all 5.5 million MMO gamers, 96% to be precise, play free-to-play games and a mere 16% plays subscription-based MMO games. The share of paying MMO gamers is 39%, slightly lower than the US and Western-European countries. The same accounts for the average monthly spent.

Peter Warman, CEO and co-founder of Newzoo, comments:

“Poland already is a great market for high-end browser and downloadable games. Most global game companies do not localize for Poland from the start and miss out on serious money that the many triple A game enthusiasts in Poland are more than willing to spend. In general I think we, in the West, should change the term Emerging markets to Growth markets, starting today.”   

Mobile and Social Gaming
Comparable to other growth markets, gaming on social networks and mobile devices, with respectively 7.0 and 7.8 million gamers, is extremely popular in Poland. Smartphones are seen as sign of status, more so than consoles. In Poland, Facebook and local social network Nasza Klasza go head to head when it comes to popularity and reach amongst paying social gamers. Each network is actively used by approximately 75% of all 1.8 million paying social gamers, who will spend an estimated $32 million this year.

In-depth market data on Poland
The Polish research involved more than 200 general and game-related topics. Newzoo clients get interactive online access to the full dataset facilitating (cross-)analyses and graph generating. Identical fresh 2012 data is also available on Turkey, US, UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium. Subscribing to all Polish data costs €4,000. GlobalCollect is key sponsor of Newzoo’s research in Poland. More free infographics and information can be found on www.newzoo.com.