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)."

Oh Noes!

[commisaro]

Think of all the new, young, innocent minds which will now come under the evil Video Game industries diabolical sway! Steps must be taken before this menace of menace unleashes a doom more terrible to imagine, perpetrated by our own hypnotically deranged children!

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[RuBLed]

"If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent. -- Bette Davis"

Here is the quote that displayed at the bottom when I browsed this article. It seems like Bette Davis begs to differ...

Think of the parents!!!

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[bezuru]

I think that it's ok for kids to play, just as long as they are playing something that is rated for them. Parrents, be wise!, mine are.

Breakdown by company?

[Stuart Gibson]

Fanboyism aside and since I don't have time to rtfa, what percentage of these sales and growth were down to Nintendo and specifically the DS?

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[Rachel Lucid]

Why 'just' the DS? The Wii is just as first-party supported by Nintendo as the DS (maybe more) and it's a damn strong part of Nintendo's market too.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[LionKimbro]

The Wii can't be that strong, can it?

The vast majority of people who want Wii's simply can't get them. I think there are far more PS2s and GameCubes and DS's out there, than Wii's.

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[stonecypher]

How the hell did someone saying "I didn't have time to read the article, someone read it for me" get modded insightful?

Official game industry growth numbers!

[Shayneisgreat]

Xbox 360- 2.75% New Gamers PS3 - 12.2% New Gamers Nintendo- 3075% New Gamers

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[KDR_11k]

Inflation is usually in the lower single digits, these growths are in the double digits. I would assume that would leave a lot of growth even after you subtract inflation (never mind that videogame prices have been pretty constant all this time, the 360 and PS3 are the first price increase in at least five years).