While recent estimates for the global games business have put it somewhere in the range of $50 billion, if you factor in the booming online gaming sector and look at the total market caps for all public companies, the global games industry is actually worth about double that, according to investment banker Paul Heydon of Avista Partners.
During a talk at Edinburgh Interactive, Heydon outlined the video game sector as he sees it. He noted that the total market cap of all public games companies globally had reached $105 billion and that online games (MMO, social/casual games, etc.) are now worth around 71% of the non-Nintendo PC/Console sector.
Heydon breaks down the global games market as follows:
- Nintendo - $34.96 billion
- Other PC/Console (without Nintendo) - $33.22 billion
- Online - $23.46 billion
- Mobile - $8.26 billion
- Retail - $3.11 billion
- Payment Services - $1.37 billion
- Distribution/Accessories - $311 million
- Outsourcing - $255 million
In addition to the growing online gaming sector, Heydon pointed out that mobile, although somewhat small now, will keep growing and eat into the other, bigger sectors. Likewise, Payment Services, driven by the rise of online and social, will continue to grow as online and mobile increases in size.
[Thanks to MCV]
2 Comments
August 27, 2010
To be fair to Paul, he was at pains to point out that he was talking market value of the listed companies, rather than the more usual total revenues of the sector. That may be where the disconnect is coming.
August 27, 2010
I hate to say it, but this reads like a Friday afternoon story—as if someone was in a hurry: confusing headline, confusing article.
First, how about spelling out "market capitalization" in its first usage, explaining to readers exactly what that is, and how it differs from the actual size of the game "market" (i.e., total annual sales and/or revenue). These things are not interchangeable, though the article could lead some to think that they are.
It should be no surprise to anyone that a given company's market capitalization is far more than its annual revenue.