The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
The first challenge is of piracy, one that has been part of the video games industry (as well as other media categories) since the early eighties.
The IA9 showed that close to 10 percent of an Australian household games library consists of pirated content. According to the survey 51 percent of these pirate copies come from family or friends.
Unfortunately 40 percent of survey respondents revealed that they would not go on to purchase a game that they had previously pirated.
The other big Australian specific issue for the video game industry is that of the local classification system.
It has been well reported about the lack of a R18+ classification for interactive entertainment, the only developed country not to have such. This fact has not permeated the public however with 63 percent of respondents unaware that Australia has no R18+ classification.
Conversely, 91 percent of adults asked in the IA9 survey thought an R18+ classification was a good idea for the country.
This attitude is backed by the revelation (well, duh!) that 37 percent of adults said the classification was a reasonable influence on their decision to purchase a game for a child. 46 percent responded that the classification made a lot of influence on their decision.
Despite calls from many for better parenting rather than government control, it looks as if parenting is not a problem with 78 percent of respondents stating that they were always present when purchasing games for children. Only 1 percent was never present.
David Bass
| ComOps, a leading Australian provider of business software products and services, has won a competitive tender to deploy its Salvus safety, r…
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