PriceWaterhouseCoopers predicts that
global video game sales will expand to $56 billion this year, more
than double the $23 billion sold in 2003.
Peter Winkler, managing director of global marketing for PricewaterhouseCoopers' Entertainment and Media Practice, predicted the
market would grow by 20 percent annually.
No other industry his unit analyzed even reached double
figures. The film industry is expected to grow at 7.5% a year,
television distribution (satellite and cable companies) at 7.1% and music at just 2%, Winkler said.
"In the past, the video game market was perceived as a
less traditional industry, filled with creative types and mavericks,"
Winkler said. "But in the last five to 10 years, there has been a real
surge. It is now more mature and resembles the film industry, with big
revenues, hit titles and production costs. Large entertainment and media
companies can't afford to ignore it."
The New York Times, recently noted that the top selling games of
2007 were not the ones we usually association computer games with.
You know those played by the typecast antisocial gaming geek, the
complex, single-player adventure. Rather the most popular games
nowadays are mass-market franchises like Guitar Hero, and the
"running and gunning" Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4. Both games are
easily accessible to a mass audience.
In fact, Seth Schiesel, of the
New York Times, says nine of the 10 top-selling games of 2007
include a significant multiplayer component. "If new
acceptance by the masses is one pillar of gaming's future, gaming's
emergence as a social phenomenon is the other," he said.
Consider the massive online gaming
phenomenon, World of Warcraft, which now has more than 10 million
members. Why? Because it is social. And likewise Battlefield LIVE
captures the social aspects of gaming.
Check out an example this new combat sim at
www.battlefieldlive.com
where you can live out your first person shooter fantasies for real.
