Social trends
A couple of new reports paint a picture of a games industry in transition, after spending fell last year but social gaming is set to fuel a resurgence this year.
Reuters spoke to market researcher NPD about the games industry. Total spending on video games and equipment fell six percent to $18.6 billion last year. But a lot of that slowness was in the early part of the year, and the launch of motion-sensitive peripherals like Microsoft's Kinect, gave the market a boost later on that looks set to continue this year.
"The increasing number of ways to acquire content has allowed the industry to maintain total consumer spend on content as compared to 2009," NPD analyst Anita Frazier told Reuters. "We should expect 2011 to be a growth year in the games industry as the consumer demand for gaming continues to evolve."
The big new way people are accessing games is socially, especially via Facebook. A recent report from eMarketer anticipates the US social gaming market alone will top a billion dollars this year. "With disposable income and a willingness to spend real dollars on virtual goods, social gamers are propelling a growing economy," said Paul Verna of eMarketer.
That's the really remarkable thing about the social gaming market - virtual goods. People are actually spending real money - half a billion dollars last year in the US - on acquiring virtual goods that technically have no value outside of the context of the game. Having said that, is it possible for people to buy and sell virtual goods between them?
