Market Study on Game Spending (all platforms)

[Blackjack]

Gamastura reported on this interesting market study, though given that it's based on answers from 13,000 respondents from age 8   and up, take it with a slight grain of salt.

Study: 20% of U.S. Game Spending Devoted To MMOs, Portals
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=26293&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GamasutraNews+%28Gamasutra+News%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Frankly (even as a devoted PC gamer), my headline would be "Consoles Take Over the Universe." Or is that too obvious?

It is interesting that console spending seems weakest (45% share) and PC gaming strongest (36%) in Germany.

[raydude]

I'm not surprised. Consoles have had excellent penetration into the household market and the games for them are fun for just about everyone. And that's only going to increase as more and more people get bigger and better TVs.

That being said, as a PC gamer, I've found my tastes switching from AAA titles to just A or B class or even indie games. This week I find myself looking more towards MP games of Solium Infernum than I do playing online L4D2 on the PC. So let the consoles have the big flashy games that cost millions to make. As long as I get the PC games made with a passion by the smaller development houses I'm happy.

Oh, and getting to play those flashy console games is just icing on the cake.

[kronovan]

I'm actually surprised that the pies for USA, UK and France are that similar. Without any real stats to go on, I'm going to say the higher % of PC gaming in Germany and the Benelux countries is because some console games still aren't localized into the language of majority there. I read somewhere that the most common localization languages for console games are English, French, Spanish and Japanese. Which might explain why the console slices in the  countries with those languages is well over 1/2 the pie and similar. I can't say I'm too impressed with a study that doesn't split out handhelds from consoles and includes 5 EU countries, but excludes Spain, Italy and the Scandinavian countries.

I'm also not surprised about the small size of the mobile phone slices. I know it's still early, but Apple's claims that the iPod and iPhone are reinvented gaming and eating up the market is just a lot of talk IMO.