Online Games to Make up a Third of All Game Sales by 2011

GameDaily reports on analyst research indicating that online games will be a huge part of the games market in a few years. The online portion of games sales hit roughly $3.8 billion in 2006, and is expected to grow at a rapid rate in the next few years, with Massively Multiplayer Online Games leading the way. By 2011 analysts expect that number to hit $11.8 billion, which would be about a third of all game sales. "'The main driver for sustained growth in the online games market will be the continued uptake of broadband services around the world,' said David Mercer, Principal Analyst at Strategy Analytics. 'Additionally, the very lucrative revenue opportunity in both the massively multiplayer segment and the electronic sell through market will continue to attract new entrants into the online games market.' While digital distribution is making more and more full games available for download for PC gamers (through services such as Steam, Direct2Drive, etc.), console makers have been much slower to offer entire games for download - although Sony is starting to do this on its PlayStation Network, with Warhawk being a primary example since it's available for download or on Blu-ray disc."

Comments

Time to buy stock

[svendsen]

in gold farming companies

Just MMOGs, huh?

[solar_blitz]

Funny, I'd have thought legitimate emulators such as the XBox Live Arcade and The Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console would at least be part of this increase in sales. Once broadband gets better by 2011, I think we'll definitely see an increase in games purchased online, and that might be a good amount of this "one third of all game sales" these researchers are anticipating.

Single player games

[toofast]

I hope game developers don't forget about those who prefer to stay out of the online experience. As a gamer in his early 30's, I got turned off by the online game experience years ago. At the risk of sounding scruff, I don't want to deal with childish and immature personalities, and the amount of crud coming from other peoples' microphones.

Re:Single player games

[FinchWorld]

I don't want to deal with childish and immature personalities, and the amount of crud coming from other peoples' microphones.

You know, if you interchange microphones with keyboards one might wonder why your on slashdot at all...

Re:Single player games

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I wholeheartedly agree. The majority of the MMO "communities" are comprised mainly of people who didn't have the social prowess to situate themselves comfortably in a real community. Not only do you wind up with a ton of social rejects, you wind up with a ton of social rejects who were ostracized in the real world and now have a sort of anonymity with which to adapt vindictive and vicious personas that they can use to lash out at other people.

Toss in the fact that most MMOs reward players primarily on time spent playing, thus giving these people a digital sense of "accomplishment" to fill their otherwise unaccomplished lives (few things seem to me as pathetic as gloating over your prowess at pressing keys on a keyboard in PvP), and you have entire worlds filled with people that perfectly normal human beings generally prefer to avoid.

I would like to see a game where there is a rating system in place that applied account wide so that if you got a bad reputation for childish antics and generally bad behavior, you could be excised from the larger worldview of players who don't want to put up with little kids and angry social misfits.

Alas, I don't see that happening. People without dates, friends, or real hobbies have a lot of spare money, so catering to them makes a lot of sense.

Re:Single player games

[everphilski]

That's fine, but in high school (1990's) I got bored of single-player content. If I wanted to challenge myself, without others, I'd hop on my bicycle and push the limits of how far/fast I could go, or work on one of my hobbies.

There are pockets of maturity within MMO's. It might be hard to find if you haven't played in awhile, or ever. But for example, my poison is Everquest. And while I've gone through a few guilds, from casual to hardcore, since getting married and graduating college, quitting for a few years I've come back to play and found a guild made of old hardcore players like me who have settled down to enjoy life - got married, had kids, whatever. We raid, do all the normal guild things, but we are all relatively mature adults. Guild chat can get racy but it isn't 12 year old kids yelling profanities, its adults talking about things adults sometimes talk about.

So in short games are what you make of it. You can find friends with a common interest and enjoy the company of others as you play your video games. (That's what I enjoy, anyways ... and finally getting my wife to enjoy them with me too!)

Re:Single player games

[the dark hero]

Hmm, i play battlefield 2142 and rarely come across any "squeekers". I also invest time on Eve Online. I have yet to come across anything remotely childish in that game.

Re:Single player games

[toofast]

Perhaps because Slashdot has a great moderation system.. Nah, that can't be it.

Re:Single player games

[brkello]

Clearly you haven't been to the Eve forums then :)

Re:Single player games

[Anonymous Coward]

Next to the kids on XBL, slashdot looks like a Quaker Society of Friends meeting.

Re:Single player games

[morari]

I agree, though for differing reasons. I dislike the impersonal feel that one gets from playing against faceless adversaries. I love playing with friends and family on our LAN or gathered around the console, but I've always gotten a bitter taste from playing online. Besides, I really get annoyed with even the slightest bit of lag, which is quite a problem in some genres.

Another thing..

[that IT girl]

Another thing that would help the sales is if they had some that didn't require huge amounts of memory and beefy graphics cards. I love those things and would have them if I could afford them, but I can't. The only thing stopping me from being a WoW nerd is my specs. No, these games wouldn't be as pretty and wouldn't appeal as much to some of the hardcore gamers, but it would get a lot more people "hooked" on the genre so to speak. Then a portion of those who never considered it before might start thinking of upgrading their equipment and playing higher-end games. Just speculating on that...thoughts, anyone?

Re:Another thing..

[nuzak]

> The only thing stopping me from being a WoW nerd is my specs.

WoW's specs are insanely low, and you can max out all settings on a $50 card. If you can't afford that, you can't afford WoW anyway.

Re:Another thing..

[that IT girl]

Hmm. I wasn't aware of that. All of my friends who play WoW have spent hundreds on their machines. Plus I only have a laptop at the moment, so...yeah. Thanks, though, I'll look a bit more into it for when I build a new system.
Was making a more general point, though.

Re:Another thing..

[Drawkcab]

A nice thing about World of Warcraft is the art direction. The models are all pretty low polygon, but they are chosen carefully to get the most benefit out of the fewest polygons. So World of Warcraft actually has lower hardware requirements than some of its peers, but in many ways it looks better too. To go any lower in hardware requirements, they would have to really shrink down zones and reduce the clipping distance, at the expense of gameplay. I think they have a good balance of making the game look decent but keeping the requirements low enough for most people to play. So I actually think they did a good job of what you're asking of them.

What does a beefy graphics card have to do w/ WoW?

[trdrstv]

Another thing that would help the sales is if they had some that didn't require huge amounts of memory and beefy graphics cards. I love those things and would have them if I could afford them, but I can't. The only thing stopping me from being a WoW nerd is my specs.

Your PC can't play WoW? Can it at least play Starcraft?

Warhawk is a Shtty example.

[trdrstv]

Not because it's a bad game, but Sony fucked the Value proposition with the downloadable version by overpricing it, and crippling it with DRM. If this is how they plan to introduce full downloadable games then it won't grow nearly as big or as fast as they think.

The BluRay version (the one worth buying) comes with a Blue Tooth Headset, manual, packaging, etc... (which includes your ability to loan it out or trade / resell it). You also have the ability to play it splitscreen multiplayer, via Lan, or online. Also retailers can discount it in an attempt to get you into their store vs the next one.

The Downloadable version (for a grand savings of $20) can't be discounted or shared and locks the purchase to your account. You can't loan it, trade it, sell it and thanks to the dumbest implementation of DRM I've seen you can't even share it with someone locally on your couch. According to Sony, they didn't pay for the right to play it, so they can't play splitscreen multiplayer with you on the same machine (not even if they use a sub account under the master account that bought it).

Warhawk is a lot of fun despite having no single player campaign, but please, please, please buy the BluRay version and don't support this kind of DRM bullshit.

Re:Warhawk is a Shtty example.

[althafain]

By that reasoning, you're suggesting the we pay Sony for the privilege of not dealing with their pathetic DRM. Isn't there a simpler solution?

Some news from the future

[Atreide]

Some news in 2012 ?

"Three month after major gaming studios merged with MPAA, the new MPAA declared yesterday the 3rd of december 2012 that pirates are costing billions of dollar to gaming corporations.
According to MPAA studies prove that solo gaming is dramatically decreasing and the reason is networking and peer to peer sharing of games."

Sounds familiar ?

Re: WoW on Laptops.

[trdrstv]

Hmm. I wasn't aware of that. All of my friends who play WoW have spent hundreds on their machines. Plus I only have a laptop at the moment, so...yeah. Thanks, though, I'll look a bit more into it for when I build a new system. Was making a more general point, though.

Blizzard typically makes games that require "low specs" to play so they have a large potential audience. Any machine that's "relatively new" can run WoW with no problems. If you want to check, there's a Game Advisor on the Games for Windows page (if you are using IE 6 or higher) that has a DB of games, and it'll scan your PC (as long as you allow the ActiveX control) to test your machine's compatibility with that game.

Have fun.

Re:Warhawk is a Shitty example.

[trdrstv]

By that reasoning, you're suggesting the we pay Sony for the privilege of not dealing with their pathetic DRM. Isn't there a simpler solution?

Well sure, you can boycott whoever you like, and spend your money however you chose. However those who are still going to buy Warhawk anyway should at least send the message that their current DL option for $40 is not acceptable.

The $60 version isn't bad (I bought it), though if the $40 DL version was the only version available I'd pass. Given the restrictions I'd pay "up to" $10 for it, but otherwise no. Their DRM stips too much of the value away.

Subscription?

[antdude]

I hope there won't be too many online games that will require subscriptions. I don't play a lot of games and I don't want to subscribe if I only play 0-2 hours a week. Hence, why I stopped playing WoW. :(