{"id":2778,"date":"2012-01-20T16:30:24","date_gmt":"2012-01-20T20:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/?p=2778"},"modified":"2012-01-20T16:37:11","modified_gmt":"2012-01-20T20:37:11","slug":"the-remarkable-video-gaming-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/?p=2778","title":{"rendered":"The Remarkable Video-Gaming Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/video-games.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-2779\" title=\"video-games\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/video-games.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"268\" height=\"409\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As you sink into the couch and pick up your Xbox consol this weekend, consider these video gaming trends.\u00a0<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The global video-game market was worth around $56 billion in 2010. That is more than twice the size of the recorded music industry, nearly a quarter more than the magazine business and about three-fifths the size of the film industry.<\/li>\n<li>It is estimated that video games will be the fastest growing form of media over the next few years, with sales rising to $82 billion by 2015.<\/li>\n<li>The video-game industry is explosive! For example, in November 2010 \u201cCall of Duty: Black Ops\u201d was released and worldwide sales of the game topped $650 million in the first five days. A month later the total stood at over $1 billion.<\/li>\n<li>According to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), 72% of households in America play games of some sort. The average age of players in America, the industry\u2019s biggest market, is 37 years of age and the ESA notes\u00a0that 42% of gamers are female.<\/li>\n<li>American consumers are expected to spend $14.1 billion on games, mostly on the consol variety written for Microsoft\u2019s Xbox 360, Sony\u2019s PlayStation 3 or Nintendo\u2019s Wii.<\/li>\n<li>China is the second biggest market and one of the fastest growing, with sales rising 20% last year. The Chinese are accelerating the development of online games, to be played on PCs, which are easier to protect from pirates.<\/li>\n<li>The biggest change in the industry in the last year\u00a0has been the rise of the mobile phone as a gaming device. Games specifically designed to be played on mobile phones already account for $8 billion of the $56 billion global games market, even though they typically sell at less than a tenth the price of a traditional consol game.<\/li>\n<li>Many games for mobile phones are made by small start-ups, attracted by low entry costs. The best known example is \u201cAngry Birds\u201d, released in 2009 by a small Finnish firm with just 55 employees. It is the most popular games ever made, with total downloads of more than 500 million.<\/li>\n<li>With the spread of high-speed Internet connections, the web has emerged as a games platform. A good example if \u201cWorld of Warcraft\u201d, which is an intricate online fantasy world filled with orcs and dragons, and attracts around 9 million regular users. Each user pays a monthly subscription fee of around $10 to play.<\/li>\n<li>The most popular Facebook games command enormous audiences. \u201cCityVille\u201d, an urban planning game, attracts 51 million users a month. Zynga, the game\u2019s developer, established in 2007 and now has 2,000 employees and revenues of around $850 million a year.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These facts were taken from articles in a special report issue of <em>The Economist<\/em>.\u00a0 You can find the full articles in <a title=\"The Economist \" href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/node\/21541164\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cAll the world\u2019s a game.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As you sink into the couch and pick up your Xbox consol this weekend, consider these video gaming trends.\u00a0 The global video-game market was worth around $56 billion in 2010. That is more than twice the size of the recorded music industry, nearly a quarter more than the magazine business and about three-fifths the size&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2778"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2778"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2781,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2778\/revisions\/2781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}