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General : U.S. Gamers Spent $3.8bil on MMOs in '09
Posted Mar 11, 2010 by Michael Bitton
Gamasutra is reporting on a study that has found that American gamers have spent 3.8 billion dollars on MMOs in 2009. Wow!
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Image Credit: Gamasutra
The charts provided in the article break down the spending figures from six different countries, including: the US, Germany, Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
The highest spending nation behind the US is Britain at 270 million, which definitely puts things into perspective!
The figures were further broken down into categories of spending. So where did your 3.8 billion go? 47% went to monthly subscriptions, 15% to annual subscriptions, 19% to virtual currency, 8% on direct microtransactions, and 11% on the boxed game or client downloads.
Some other interesting revelations: The Brits spend the most (of their total) on direct microtransactions at 19%, Belgians spent the most on annual subscriptions (20%), and the French really love their virtual currency (31%).
Of course, we still spent more total on all of the above. But it is definitely illuminating information with regards to the tendencies of gamers in different countries.
View the original article here.
[Thanks EricDanie for the tip!]
So much for a recession.. Perhaps the politicians should move aside and let gamers rule the world?
Ofcourse the American gamers spend more money on mmo's cause there are more american gamers than their are people in belgium.
I cast H-Bombga V on Bin Laden...wewt problem solved :)
So, mmo´s are GREATLY profitable with the current crap, imagine when they start making top quality ones =x
What recession? If Blizzard should go bankrupt the government will bail them out.
I cast H-Bombga V on Bin Laden...wewt problem solved :)
H-Bombga V Missed!
No offense to our Euro friends, but next time you wonder why NA is catered to by MMO devs, take a look at those numbers.
Virtual Currency 19% of 3.8 billion = 722 million dollars
Is that all 3rd party gold sales?
I think this is the first time I've seen that quantified.
Ken
it's also interesting how the countries differ slightly.
For memory Brittan uses more micro transactions than the US.
If they can provide us with a total for all Europe then we can compare. :)
I don't believe it. Any survey can say what is wanted just by asking the right question.
If they can provide us with a total for all Europe then we can compare. :)
Yes or atleast western Europe + Scandinavian countries. Europe has twice the population of the US.
Interesting that some people think Europe is 5 countries, I could have sworn that there were 50. Also European servers are frequented by Russians and Middle Eastern countries.
I imagine the virtual currency is microtransactions from (moslty) the F2P games.
Yeah, I also believe 'virtual currency' means microtransactions, after all you purchase currency to be used into the cash shop, an indirect form of microtransactions, which makes me wonder what "direct microtransactions" would be as every F2P MMO out there uses a virtual currency for their cash shops.
Anyway, it would be very interesting to see the next study made on a lot more countries including Asian ones, so we can learn more of the MMO gamer population habits from our countries.
I thought virtual currencies would represent a lot more than just 25% of the industry in the US, but I guess I'm spoiled by Aihoshi's sugar coating or the F2P MMOs, they are still a long way from becoming the norm, if they ever do. I'll be a lot more under-impressed if these actually include the ToS-breaking gold-seller and powerleveling revenue.
To those mentioning these don't really represent a comparison in active players between these games, I have to say that in a MMO of similar budget and quality, it's the revenue that counts to keep that game alive and in a good future (aka no lay-offs and perhaps even a future growth in the dev team, see CCP history if you need a good example).
And to marketing teams of MMOs - over-hyping your unfinished products that won't be able to sustain that player base to achieve inflated box sales is shooting your own foot - what matters are the subscriptions (P2P-wise).
Yeah, I also believe 'virtual currency' means microtransactions, after all you purchase currency to be used into the cash shop, an indirect form of microtransactions, which makes me wonder what "direct microtransactions" would be as every F2P MMO out there uses a virtual currency for their cash shops.
Anyway, it would be very interesting to see the next study made on a lot more countries including Asian ones, so we can learn more of the MMO gamer population habits from our countries.
I thought virtual currencies would represent a lot more than just 25% of the industry in the US, but I guess I'm spoiled by Aihoshi's sugar coating or the F2P MMOs, they are still a long way from becoming the norm, if they ever do. I'll be a lot more under-impressed if these actually include the ToS-breaking gold-seller and powerleveling revenue.
To those mentioning these don't really represent a comparison in active players between these games, I have to say that in a MMO of similar budget and quality, it's the revenue that counts to keep that game alive and in a good future (aka no lay-offs and perhaps even a future growth in the dev team, see CCP history if you need a good example).
And to marketing teams of MMOs - over-hyping your unfinished products that won't be able to sustain that player base to achieve inflated box sales is shooting your own foot - what matters are the subscriptions (P2P-wise).
well in WoW you buy a faction or race change directly, no "wow points" and the same with City of Heroes there are no "hero points"
Rofl and all these folks in other countries take about how bad us Americans are and how we should not have a sayin gaming circles.
Rofl. the chart says it all.
LOL
Wow! Totally puts things into perspective. Too bad they can't put out asian numbers along side those. Makes sense, though, the way that graph plays out.
You all got ripped off, canada aint even on the list so we got all our play for free i guess :)
I too would like to see more of the world's numbers including Australia since my wife is from there. :)
I'd also like to see what those numbers are divided by on customers. Sure the raw dollars are important but I wonder how many people those are divided up by. Also I have to say that for those in countries that do not have server hubs (again I point to OZ) their numbers are going to be down just from a playability perspective. Or at least I would expect them to be. Would be interesting to know.
As for Europe vs. USA I agree that there is a larger population in Europe than in the USA then again as mentioned there are about 50 different countries you have to deal with in Europe, not so with the USA. Plus how many different languages are in Europe? There are far more to numbers than just the numbers. :D
I love Statistics!
Just under 240 million in those 5 countries, but there is 830 million people in Europe, I see a discrepancy somewhere.
"The report points out that Blizzard's World of Warcraft has the most number of players in the U.S. out of all the MMOs it tracked, just in front of NeoPets and Club Penguin. Other MMOs in the top five include Disney ToonTown and RuneScape."
"This report contains comparative data om MMO players across six surveyed countries. It comprises approximately 60 pages and 70 graphs. The product also includes a full table set comparing MMO players in all six countries across all questions of the survey allowing unlimited cross-analysis and detail.
If required we will assist in interpreting the data making sure you get the most out of it for your sales, marketing, product development and strategy.
Price of the report and unique dataset is 4,950 euro. Please see the link on this page for the full contents of the report."
Woah
Probaby based on a poll of 2k ppl per country.
And then we wounder why game developers make crap, cause we buy it :(
The data here is kinda fishy.
They state that there are 46 Million MMO players in the U.S.
21 Million who pay to play MMOs.
2.5 Million U.S. Wow subscribers.
They'd have us believe that there are 18.5 million MMO players in the U.S. paying to play games other than WoW.
That would support 100 MMOs with 180K paying customers each sharing in the remaining $2.0-2.5 Billion in revenue.
This flies in the face of the desperate state of the MMO industry today, where there are nowhere near 25 clearly successful MMOs, let alone 100. I think this whole article is suspect based on that.
Stats and lies.. all add up to the same thing...
Add all the EU countries together before you start comparing economic blocs..
On terms of international economic zones, I'd say that the US might need to get some more trailer parks hooked up for broadband, before they are even close :)
Even if you added in 20 more countries at $55 million apiece (the 5th largest listed for Europe), the whole list of 25 would still only be around half of the listed figure of $3.8 billion for the U.S.
And how you came to figure that American trailer parks are so much worse than European state-run housing projects I'll never know. The poor gotta live somewhere.
The comparison is quite accurate if you were to ask me. They are comparing COUNTRIES not CONTINENTS. To see how much we spend compared to them is pretty emberassing. No wonder why Americans are so obese (me included)
I wonder how much the rest of the world contributes to the MMO market? Why no mention of Asia which is another huge market?
While the report is interesting, it also seems to be rather selective, so I wonder how representitive it is?
What happened to the Asian-Pacific population? I missed this article a few days back. Eh, life on lifes terms. But going over it it gives a good perspective on the US Domestic market. It also gave good insight into the UK market and PARTS of the EU.
I was really hoping to see Asia. It also didn't specify how it got that information. I would love to get my hands on a copy of the report itself.
if you count Asia as one market then it is THE biggest market by far.
As for the comparisons...as someone pointed out, it is by country only not region. Of course if you toss the US into any country comparison it is going to trump every other country out there (except some of the Asian countries)
Hasn't North America already annexed Canada? No? Well I guess they should get to work on that right away.
I too would like to see how this breaks down vs the Asian gaming market.
There are a LOT of successful MMO's.
The problem is that people dont have a good scale to judge success. If a game is not as large as WoW then it is seen to 'fail', despite it being a huge financial and social success.
You have to remember that this includes everything from MMO's to fees for XBox live, etc. It also includes the hugely successful F2P MMO's that are often discounted.
Funny how they totally omitted Asian countries i bet Korea and china, etc murder the US in World stats.
A very biased report in my opinion.
I doubt China would share their figures if asked.
I would think Korea and Japan would rival the US. Maybe they don't track? /shrug