Week 2 EOC: Boston Consulting Group -Video Games

With a still plummeting economy no one is safe, even the videogame market. “According to datacompiled by the NPD Group, a global market research company, and released bythe Entertainment Software Association, the computer and video game industrysold 273 million units in 2009 leading to an astounding $10.5 billion inrevenue.”  However during the first quarter of 2011 “Total consumerspending on video game hardware, content, and accessories hit $5.9 billion”  a nearly 4.6 billion dollar drop in less than two years. And it’s not looking good. The once big stars Wii and Xbox 360 have dropped to cash cows leaving PSP as a dog without any kind of hope. Meanwhile the mobile game industry via Apple iPhone and iPad seems to be growing in spite of the economic downturn. With most of the same games as most consoles and much cheaper pricing it seems the App store is the one to beat.

According to Distimo The share of iPhone owners who play iOS games is between 50 and 75%. Nearly 15 million Americans who play games on mobile phones or tablets actively use an iPad, and in the European countries this total is seven million. The iPad is ahead of the PlayStation Portable in terms of the total number of people playing games on a specific device.

And as more games grow for iDevices fewer and fewer people will be wanting to purchase major consoles that do only a limited number of things and purchase instead iDevices, which do twice the work, at a relatively cheaper price with a lot more games and options at half the price. Given time iDevices will more than likely outnumber game stations and the available games therein via the Appstore. Free games alone count for more purchases than paid. Mobile games are the new stars in the market.