Digital Game Distribution Forecast to hit $400M
According to a new report released by Screen Digest, digital distribution of gaming content is finally set to take off, hitting $400M by 2010 in the Western world.
Is that a huge or a small number? That would be 1/10 the Skype acquisition, less than 10 months of Apple iTunes downloads, and less than 1/10 of the yearly “gaming” industry revenue number that gets tossed around. In those terms, it seems like it could be puny.
A smarter view might be to look at the trends in the gaming industry. Numbers swirl around South Korea which some analyst peg at over $100M by itself for online games. Likewise in Southeast Asia, more and more game developers are looking to bring micropayments into their game offerings.
Even better, online game leaders are introducing new models in gaming. Take for example the concept of arcade play. Raise your hand if you’ve ever put three or more quarters into a video game? Raise your hand again if you’ve dropped more than $5 in any given session. OK, I have. But what was really happening? — I was playing a game, or more simply, I was renting entertainment time.
Fast forward to today. Our advanced friends in Korea have successful implementations of game rentals for low price points. The site is here, but it’s in Korean. Just imagine if you could rent games in any country, for a quarter, $0.50, or a $1. That might be an interesting concept and application of micropayments.
So there, one country alone, South Korea, may overshadow the $400M number I mentioned earlier. The question is, does Korea have the only innovators in making this model successful?
