The PC Gaming Alliance (in conjunction [[link]] with researchers DFC Intelligence) have released their report on 2008. How the year went down, in their eyes, for the PC market.
And while you’ll find many of the numbers and facts here carefully cherry-picked to paint the PC industry in as glowing a light as possible, you’ll also find that many are impressive regardless.
The important stuff:
– “The PC is the largest single platform for games with annual worldwide revenue of about $11 billion”. Not bad. Further breaking that down, $6 billion of that came from North America and Western Europe.
– MMOs are where the money at. While “top PC games regularly generate over $50 million at retail”, MMO games perform much better, the PCGA citing Asian [[link]] MMOs that generate over $100 million each, along with World of Warcraft, which generates over $1 billion annually.
– The market is splitting. Not between retail and MMO, but between developed and developing markets. Gamers in “emerging” markets are helping drive a boom in casual gaming, because their PCs often [[link]] can’t play games like Crysis.
If you’ve got an hour or two spare and would like to read the entire report, you can get it from the link below.