Online gaming outsells video and music

by Alexander Sliwinski { Sep 12th 2007 at 3:55PM }

According to a new report by Strategy Analytics, gaming is outselling video and music in the online market. Online sales allegedly account for 33% of all software revenue in the industry at this point with $3.8 billion worth of revenue in '06. They expect online gaming to generate $11.8 billion by 2011.

The report says the thing driving the market is the continued growth of broadband services and opportunities in the MMO genre. It's pretty easy to see how this could be lucrative, just in the last two years we've seen the explosion of Xbox Live Arcade and Marketplace, along with MMOs like WoW and LoTRO. For all we know they might be setting the bar too low with the $11.8 billion estimate if things keep moving toward digital distribution.

Tags: digitaldistribution, report, sales

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Crono (NDF - Fire Ring) @ Sep 12th 2007 3:59PM

Outselling by percentage or outselling by raw dollar.

If its raw dollar, then no freaking duh.

umm....hello??? @ Sep 12th 2007 4:04PM

lol....I was thinking the same thing...duh!

RoboChamp @ Sep 12th 2007 4:01PM

Ha! Take THAT non-gaming mediums!

Vegnagun @ Sep 12th 2007 4:01PM

How the hell does music make any money? File sharing should have crippled it by now.

Crono (NDF - Fire Ring) @ Sep 12th 2007 4:06PM

Because, dispite what the RIAA has been telling you, music piracy in the US really isn't that big a problem, and doesn't affect sales nearly as badly as they claim.

Vegnagun @ Sep 12th 2007 4:14PM

Thanks for that tidbit of knowledge Crono. I don't really know the facts so I guess your right. At least they stopped the crusade against piracy. Personally, I feel that if tons of people in America can call themselves pirates that's just great. Pirates are awesome, too bad the piracy is less epic than in the old days.

vidGuy @ Sep 12th 2007 4:22PM

Yeah, really what the record sales decline showed was not that piracy was a problem but that
1) CD prices were too high for the market and
2) people wanted digital distribution of music, which wasn't offered at the time

Now with iTunes and other digital music sales, overall legal sales are probably even-with or even higher than in the mid 90s.

Vegnagun @ Sep 12th 2007 4:26PM

Really? That's cool I didn't know that. Still raises the question "why buy music when you can pirate it so easily?". I suppose the other half of America is hard-working and honest.

vidGuy @ Sep 12th 2007 4:26PM

Also, we've seen new-CD prices go from $14.99 - $19.99 down to $9.99 - $12.99. If anything, it was a lesson that industry had to learn.

vidGuy @ Sep 12th 2007 4:25PM

It always makes me laugh when people are stupefied that video games are big business. When I tell people that some video game budgets are higher than most movie budgets and that top video games can make more revenue in ONE DAY than a movie in its entire life, jaws drop. I don't get it, of course it's big business.

My girlfriend thinks video games are too expensive. Funny, when I can get 20-50 hours out of a $50-$60 game... and we constantly go to 2 hour movies ($20) or out to nice dinners ($40-$50). So yeah...