Industry $26 Billion In 2006

According to DFC Intelligence analyst David Cole, whose report is covered on Gamespot, the games industry will reach a revenue of $26 Billion in 2006. From the article: "With a true worldwide marketplace and increasing ownership of multiple systems, this is not a winner-take-all situation. Instead, it is about how profits can be maximized across the unique installed base of different console, portable, PC, and location-based platforms..."

Comments

Or 2008?

[brejc8]

The article says 2008

Even with all this money flowing in...

[thenetbox]

Even with all this money flowing in it seems as if the video game industry is one of the most difficult ones to get into. A few companies will keep getting bigger and richer and the people creating these games will keep getting over worked and less appreciated. But I guess that's what happens everywhere.

Does any one have a list of revenues of other industries? I know the film industry made approximately $24 billion in 2004.

winner-not-take-all?

[photon_chac]

en... wondering why MS would enter a winner-cannot-take-all market ...

Re:winner-not-take-all?

[NCraig]

I'm sure they can think of 26 billion reasons...

26 BILLION DOLLARS

[HeliumHigh]

26 Billlilillioonnnon dollars, and they still can't come up with anything better than "NFL 2005.3b Reloaded Gold, Presented by EA Sports".
It's a big market! We want better games! Not just new characters!

Sorry, had to get that off my chest :)

Re:26 BILLION DOLLARS

[jackbird]

Tried Darwinia?

Re:26 BILLION DOLLARS

[patternjuggler]

they still can't come up with anything better than "NFL 2005.3b Reloaded...

It's kind of hard to see why they would be motivated to change an extremely successful business model. It's also helpful not to judge the diversity and novelty of electronic gaming by the one or two most successful franchises, but to actually actively look for some interesting games. Independent film aficionados don't whine about how the summer blockbuster releases are just sequels or remakes (actually they probably do, but they shouldn't), they go rent and talk about independent films- for games that is shareware, open source, mods, and some games released through normal channels.

I think the fact that this exact same comment (usually about sports games or FPSs) comes up every single article about the general state of gaming is because of laziness- people want the games that get the most advertisements and media coverage and biggest budgets to be the kind of game they want to play, and their obscure tastes to be forced upon everyone, instead of doing a little more digging to find games they like.

Re:26 BILLION DOLLARS

[HeliumHigh]

Actually, no I haven't. But uplink was SUPERB.
I also really enjoyed the Prince of Persia series. HL2 was good, along with its mods.. the UT series was good also, albeit rather plotless.
There are good games yes, but most all of them aren't even worth the money.
I do however enjoy those rare gems :)

Re:26 BILLION DOLLARS

[HeliumHigh]

You claim that "it is a successful business model", but I know two people who own sports games. One, is myself (it was a gift), and the other got it bundled.
There are alot of small and obscure movies that make it onto the big big screens.
I'm sick of games that have basically squat different.
I like Halo yes, because it was a good game. I don't like NFL anything, because it is boring. It's the same thing as last year, except for the new names! That, and the fact that this is the only one to have, ohh, I dunno, armpit hair.
They aren't innovating with these games, they are just trying to suck money with them!
A great set of innovative games were the Prince of Persia games. They were interesting, fun, and had action, puzzles, and plot.
The new Madden or NFL game doesn't have squat on that.
It's not just the NFL games. It's not the EA games, or the sports games. It is the boring redundant pieces of crap games.
Pokemon is an example, and so is just about EVERY game made off a movie.
Look at the LOTR games. I couldn't jump a one foot ledge because of the physics. I could kill(wound) Nazgul, take out ten thousand orcs by myself, but I couldn't jump a two foot ledge.
Doom3 - boring. Scary yes, but rather boring.
Walk around a corner and guess what! A monster. Just like last time. Yes, there were changes, and it differs, but not alot.
The games industry needs to change on that respect.

I have done alot of digging to find games I like.
Yes, I like alot of mainstream games, but I also like Uplink, Starscape, old good ones like Abuse, there are tons!
I play games I like, and I know everyone isn't going to agree on whats fun and whats not, but the same peice of crap ten times over with new graphics isn't fun.
If I can guess what I need to do next, before you even give me a hint, it shouldn't be there.

Look at the Zelda or Metroid games.
Zelda the Minnish Cap was EASY. Metroid Fusion was simple! The orriginal was harder than Fusion. A link to the past was better than the Minnish Cap. I agree that Ocarina of Time was _GREAT_, but windwaker wasn't.

I just think that there needs to be some change. If you can't see that, then you will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes :)

~HH (And dang, that was a LONG comment.)

Re:26 BILLION DOLLARS

[Anonymous Coward]

So stop buying it year after year, ffs.

Your dollars are your vote, yet you buy whatever is shoved down your throat.

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

"...how profits can be maximized across the unique installed base of different console, portable, PC, and location-based platforms..."

1. Choose System
2.
3. Maximize Profit

overtaking the film industry

[alvinrod]

I've been hearing on the radio and in different places that the video game industry is poised to take over the motion picture industry in terms of revenue generated.

From the article:

Just last week, analysts at PricewaterhouseCoopers projected the worldwide game industry revenue (revenues from hardware, software, and peripherals) to increase from $25.4 billion in 2004 to $54.6 billion in 2009

According to This site the movie industry pulled in $44.8 billion worldwide for 2004. I don't see the motion picture industry growing as much as the video game industry, so it's quite possible that we could see video games overtake movies before the decade is out.

Re:overtaking the film industry

[shoptroll]

Right now the buzz word has been making more money than the box-office...

That doesn't include home releases, tv licensing (PPV, Movie Channels and networked tv), etc.

Of course we are talking revenue here. That doesn't take expenses into consideration (I think).

Only a matter of time...

[yotto]

In just a few short years, the entire games industry may be even worth as much as Google!

Games vs Movie and Music

[rishistar]

Well also the music industry. I traditionally have been someone who purchased a reasonable amount of movies and music (at least one CD and a couple of DVDs a month), but bought my first ever games console in March (a Nintendo DS). Since then most of my spare 'luxury goods' money has gone towards games for that. I've only bought two commercial artiste CDs and two DVDs in that time period, coz they were going cheap. (And one of them was Baseketball!)

There is only so much dosh for us punters to spend money on - I hope the movie and music industry pay attention to this when they produce reports on falling income. Or at least someone points this out to the government being lobbied!

The movie industry makes money from licensing half the games anyway.

How much bigger!?

[Noiprox]

It makes one wonder how much bigger this industry can become. How big was the film industry in its fourth decade? How about now? How will the games industry look in 2070?

Inflated forecasts

[Doctor Cat]

I think most of these market research firms tend to project overly optimistic revenue numbers. I recall seeing numbers from the top forecasters in 1997, when I was working at an online games startup. They were talking about the online gaming industry reaching $1 billion in revenues in a few years, or the other one said no no no, 2 or 3 billion!

Basically I think they're selling these reports, which cost hundreds or sometimes thousands of dollars, to management at game companies who have to come up with some way to grow the company's revenues. Or at least convince higher management that they're going to do so. Are they going to want to invest in a report that says "industry expected to grow 3-6% annualy", or are they going to look for the advice they want from reports that say "Holy Crap, Batman, next year there'll be an extra billion dollars for you and your competing companies to grab up! Listen to us and maybe you'll find good clues how to grab your share!"

I think that reports that have rosy revenue forecasts probably sell more copies to corporations than those that don't. So there's a constant pressure on market research firms to be "over-optimistic".