The Evolving European Video Game Software Ecosystem - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 212

analyst fi rm (PricewaterhouseCoopers 2011) the global video game market
grew from less than US$30 billion in 2003 to more than US$50 billion
in 2008, and was expected to grow to over US$80 billion in 2015, which
makes it one of the fastest-growing segments of ICT as well of media and
content (see also Box 11.1) .
The character of demand is also changing due to a variety of factors such
as increased ease of use, the emergence of social computing and communi-
ties and the supply of simple and short games, capturing an up-until-now
unsatisfi ed demand across age categories, socio-economic classes and gen-
ders. Related to the widening demographics is the fact that, demographi-
cally, the segment of “hardcore” is becoming older as they have aged with
game industry, hence expanding the age span of the addressable market
(Miles and Green 2008). The average age of players in America is thirty-
seven ( Economist , 2011).
However, there are some dif erences in the dynamics of individual seg-
ments. In particular, whereas the online and wireless product segments
will grow and, as a result, increase their overall importance, the sales value
of PC-based video games will decline. By 2013, it is expected that it will
have dropped to around US$4 billion, or 6 per cent of the overall video
games market value, although the decline is less marked in Europe than
elsewhere (PricewaterhouseCoopers 2009). Instead, driven by increasing
broadband connectivity, online capabilities of consoles and handhelds and
ever-enhanced capabilities of mobile phones, online and mobile games as
underlined already represent the fastest-growing segments of the industry.
Thus, clearly much of the future growth lies in games going online and
mobile (De Prato 2012b). Both PricewaterhouseCoopers and IDATE pre-
dict rapid growth in these segments; PricewaterhouseCoopers (2009, 2011)
estimated the market to grow to about US$15 billion in 2013, around 40
per cent of the total, whereas IDATE (2008, 2011) predicted growth from
€9 to €17 billion for the same time period and a similar share of the global
market. Hence, both these segments present growth opportunities, but
their impact may be more important than that.
As for so many other content and media industries, the potentially most
disruptive trend is that video games are increasingly going online . This
trend has been ongoing for quite some time now. Commercial multiplayer
online games emerged in the 1990s. The major console manufacturers
launched networks (e.g. PlayStation 2 network gaming and Xbox LIVE) to
support online play and to download additional content in the early 2000s
(Kerr 2006). By this time, major ol ine games also started to include online
elements where players could post scores on online leader boards, buy add-
on elements, download updates or play against other gamers (Miles and
Green 2008).
In fact, video games are particularly suited for online delivery and play,
in contrast to some other media. Being digital, games can be easily deliv-
ered online and, perhaps more importantly, the non-linear interaction