Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 07 July 2008 11:35
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
All three major console makers are promising big announcements at E3 to
surprise us all, but in a shaky economic environment, will the gaming
industry’s golden age survive? A major forecast says yes – but is it
right?
E3 is the big computer games
expo held each year in Los Angeles, and while this year’s event promises to be smaller and with none of the sexily clad ‘booth babes’ of years gone by, some huge announcement are set to be made.
While E3 will be on from July 14 to 17 this year, gaming market research firm DFC Intelligence has just
forecast a truly amazing 2009 for the gaming industry with a predicted US $57 billion in sales - globally!
The revenue isn’t from sales of games alone, but sayeth DFC, from video game hardware (including portable systems and PCs), software (games) titles and online games across 25 countries. In addition, DFC says 11 countries have annual video game revenue in excess of US $1 billion!
This comes at a time when the world is going through a major economic slump, prompting fears that revenues could fall, but DFC analyst David Cole instead says: “Consumer spending on software is at record levels and the game business seems to actually benefit from a recession because games are a relatively cheap form of home entertainment.”
Well, perhaps that’s the case overseas, although in Australia with many games at $100+ to purchase, that’s not exactly “cheap”. Still the games seem to fall in price soon enough and are cheaper at major retailers like Target or Big W (an Australian Wal-Mart equivalent), and they usually have more longevity and entertainment value than a movie so Cole is more or less right.
Cole also predicts top performances by each console, something I remember predicting myself back in 2006 and early 2007, given that each console had its own strengths and the existence of a growing market of gamers, why couldn’t each platform still do well with millions of sales?
To explain this Cole says: “The Wii does not appear to be a fad and it has the chance to be one of the best selling systems of all-time,” while predicting that the PS3 is expected to equal the Wii in annual software sales by 2012 and that the Xbox 360 will “remain a leading player” in markets like the US and the UK.
DFC analyst Jeremy Miller says: “With multiple platforms establishing healthy installed bases there is a growing need to look at potential sales on a given platform based on not just aggregate hardware sales, but also game type. The Wii not only has unique features and a broad demographic appeal, but Nintendo is dominant as a software publisher. For many third party publishers this means they will have much greater success on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, even if Wii sales continue to be strong.”
Funnily enough, 2007 didn’t see a console gaming system as the number one platform for games, while 2008’s E3 is promising a lot of mega surprises to shake up all our expectations for who will emerge victorious at the end of 2008! Please read on to page 2.
