Billionaire social games market: Users in the mood to buy. Palo Alto (pte/09/30/2010/06:05) – The boom in social games has turned the virtual goods business into a billion-dollar market. Especially on Facebook, games like Farmville that the coffers of manufacturers like Zynga and Co are full to the brim. In the USA alone, digital objects on the web will exceed the two billion mark in 2011, as market researchers at Inside Network http://www.insidenetwork.com predict. At $2.1 billion, the volume is growing strongly again compared to this year at $1.6 billion.
The virtual goods market is currently only shared by a few successful providers. However, large Internet and media companies are increasingly pushing into the social gaming segment and are intensifying the competition for users and sales. It is not without reason that Internet giant Google, for example, recently took over several specialists such as Slide and SocialDeck (pressetext reported: http://pressetext.com/news/100831025/ ).
Growing sales attract media companies
Not only the early companies want to participate in the trend towards games on social platforms, which has developed into a billion-dollar business within just a few months to years. In addition to Google, Disney recently unequivocally expressed its interest in the social games market in the form of its $750 million takeover of Playdom. The media group also took the same direction when acquiring music game developer Tapulous, and Electronic Arts has previously underlined similar ambitions with its $400 million purchase of Playfish.
The market is still in its infancy and has correspondingly high growth potential. The proportion of social game players who actually buy virtual goods is only one to two percent, reports CNN, citing data from Forrester Research. However, it remains questionable whether the industry will be able to significantly increase the proportion of users willing to pay in the future. (End)
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