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Online Games to Quadruple by 2011 37

Posted by timothy from the sextuple-sounded-too-racy dept.
ches_grin writes "A new report from DFC Intelligence predicts that the online game market will quadruple over the next five years, growing from $3.4 billion to more than $13 billion. Although previous studies have pointed to Asia as the leader in online gaming, this report suggests that North America may take the lead. MMO are expected to be the genre that drives growth, although casual games are also predicted to grow. Despite the predicted growth, the gaming market is not entirely rosy: 'On the downside, even with market growth many companies are likely to struggle to become profitable. A big problem is that the market is becoming more fragmented among different companies, types of products and markets.'"
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Online Games to Quadruple by 2011 More

Online Games to Quadruple by 2011

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  • Half of this will come from: (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MrSquirrel ( 976630 ) on Thursday June 08, 2006 @11:57AM (#15495082)
    World of Starcraft.

  • more news (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    and another report says that the market will dissapear by 2012, at the end of the fourth world, according to the mayas
  • WOW! (no pun inteded) . . . So this means we can look forward to a quadrupling of gaming-related deaths . . . awesome! And a quadrupling in the sizes of EverCrack Support Groups.

  • Game Bloat (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Dr. Eggman ( 932300 )
    "'On the downside, even with market growth many companies are likely to struggle to become profitable. A big problem is that the market is becoming more fragmented among different companies, types of products and markets.'"

    The problem with fragmenting is a symptom. A symptom of a bloated market, flowing with a variety of games but little true innovation. When you can't differentiate your product through innovative gameplay, your going to struggle. The bright side of this, for us gamers, is that is bloat
    • The problem with fragmenting is not a problem. Fragmentation in this case is another word for diversity. And diversity is _good_. More games and more types of games will mean better games.

      • Re:Game Bloat (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Dr. Eggman ( 932300 )
        I would agree that diversity is good, but then I look out there... and all I see is a sea of clones and crap. As I said it is temporary, however, eventually the good will beat out the garbage and the bloat will subside. When that happens, it will be because a few companies really innovated. This is not some final state; the market will bloat out again, copying the successful games and starting the cycle all over again. I guess we're just looking at the same cycle in two different ways.
  • I love how they seperate MMO's From Non-MMO's. They used the Term "MMO's and Casual Games" This would lead you to believe that all MMO's are not casual but rather lives that people live. There needs to be more Casual MMO's such as EVE Online, which doesnt credit you on Playing for 6 hours in one day. Rather is credits you on how long you have had your account online or off.

    Skills are raised but training in that spacific skill. The skill will complete in a set ammount of time. Certin attributes affect it but
    • If anything MMO's need to learn to copy less and do their own thing. Eve has its way of dealing with game time vs advancement, WoW has another, Second life is totally different again. All three seem to work, the companies behind them make a profit and can continue to do business.

      The whole "level advancement" thing can't be fixed by a one size fits all solution. Different players just want different things out of game. As Second Life seems to prove you don't even have to have levels, therefore no level grin

      • Is Second Life really even a game?

        SL appears to me to be the second-coming of those old text-based MUDs where all the content was put together by users. Now, I wouldn't really consider those "games" so much as "social environments." I mean, games are supposed to have a set of goals to reach through some given framework. As I understand, SL is pretty much an open-ended creation environment.
    • EVE is casual in the sense that it's addictive, but other than that it's probably even more immersive and even more of a time sink that most other MMOs. Casual MMOs, MCOs [suttree.com] can still work, but in much more of a pick-up-and-go manner. Persistent worlds aren't the ideal place for MCOs, but they can work. Puzzle Pirates is probably the best example of that.

      Or there's Passive Gaming [suttree.com], where Casual Games could really excel. I don't know of anyone who's created a true hybrid MMO, MCO, Passive Game but I'm pretty sur
  • 4 times the same old boring quests and killing rats for only $15 a month. Yipee!!
  • I'm getting tired of RPGs and FPSs.
  • as a mmo vet, i'm getting kind of tired of the same old stuff. unless the industry can produce a fundamentally different, engaging, content-driven game (with grinding to a minimum), i think that the industry will hit a ceiling.

    it might bubble up occasionally, but people will see that its the same idea dolled up and inside a different box and it will sink back down. with the advent of wow, i couldn't imagine the mmo market doing much better than doubling, at best.

  • Finite amount of money... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kumiorava ( 95318 ) on Thursday June 08, 2006 @01:31PM (#15495839)
    Has it ever occurred to these researchers and analysts that there is only so much money people are willing to put on games and entertainment. All gaming areas seem to get similar market growths, which makes the overall spending on games to increase too much to be realistic. I think they might be right about quadrubling the consumption but I doubt that market will be that much. These numbers mean that 100 million people need to subscribe to 10/month service. Compare that to WOW, which has "only" 6 million subscribers.

    Besides my own experiences with WOW makes me think twice before subscribing and getting involved with an online game. I'm sure there are others who are not willing to spend 100+ a year for one single game.
    • As I mentioned in a post I made.

      One of the answers to this problem of a finite number of subscribers is to REMOVE subscription cost. I don't know why there has only been one company that I'm aware of that has created an MMO that requires only the cost of buying the game. That is Guild Wars. On the other hand, I do know why they won't remove the fee, greed. Theres a lot of money to be made in MMO subcription based gaming.

      Personally I think the only reason why Guild Wars is fee free is because the company Are
  • This assumes that people will still be interested in online gaming 5 years from now.

    5 years ago:

    I bet Hollywood would have thought box office receipts would have trippled by now

    I bet the RIAA would have thought the fad of online music would be over by now

    I bet Hummer drivers would have thought it would be cheap to drive a big ass cars now

    I bet nobody figured George Bush would still be in office today.

    I bet the makers of Duke Nukem Forever would have thought they would have released a game by now

    The bottom l

  • The real reason is freedom (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Zigurd ( 3528 ) on Thursday June 08, 2006 @02:55PM (#15496591) Homepage
    The real reason online games are growing is freedom: No restrictions based on the size of the company. No ESRB. No Wal-Mart decency standards. No industry self-censorship. No distributors and publishers colluding with the bluenoses. No laws banning violence or sexual content. And, if such laws were to appear, the games would move to jurisdictions where they could not be shut down.

    Freedom of expression isn't just a nice ideological point, it's profitable.
    • No I don't believe any of it has anything to do with freedom. There are still in fact ESRB ratings on the actual game content. An MMO would be rated AO if it was possible to get completely nude and show genetalia, it'd still mention though that gaming experience would vary because of other players. There may not be "collluding" (I oringally read that as "collision with bluenosses), but there will still be that struggle between developers and publishers. Developers want that great game while the Publishers w
  • I do believe the MMO genre is a new way for a company to create a sustained flow of money. I see that a lot of companies are going this route probably due to the fact that the cost to start production on a new game is so high, and will continue to rise with Hi-Def around the corner. I believe this is why so many companies have jumped on the MMO band wagon. All a company needs to do is create a decent MMO, get a fairly decent customer base and working subscription cost, and they have a constant flow of money
  • I suspect the "multi-game subscription package" approach is going to take off. How many people will pay for more than one monthly subscription? Darn few, I'll bet. But many would pay a bit more a month for a "universal" subscription to a bunch of games, even if they don't end up playing any more hourse a month. The advantage to the publisher is that players are more likely to stay with them, if they have multiple games - if one game gets old, they may still be hooked on another.

    Within a couple of years,

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