Worldwide Games Industries See Major Growth

With the seventh generation of consoles now in play, and online gaming shooting for the stratosphere, games markets in other nations are now seeing unheard-of growth. Gamasutra reports that China's online gaming market saw 74% growth in 2006, up to 6.54 billion Yuan, or $US 839 million. Over half of the titles in that market are home-grown. Meanwhile, GameDaily has the word that Canada's games industry is rapidly approaching $1 Billion. Games sales are up worldwide, as that article reports. "The U.K. had a record breaking year, game sales in Japan hit an all-time high, the U.S. video game industry achieved a new record of $12.5 billion, and now it would appear that our North American counterpart also set a new record. The Canadian Press has reported that Canada's video game industry came close to $1 billion in sales during 2006, hitting a new record of $933 million (up 22 percent)."