UNDERSTANDING THE GAMES INDUSTRY - INDUSTRY AND MARKET TRENDS

UNDERSTANDING THE GAMES INDUSTRY - INDUSTRY AND MARKET TRENDS - By Ben Allardyce

This is a report about industry and market trends. Industry trends are the trends of large companies and the software that they develop, whilst on the other hand market trends are the trends the gamers follow, for example what the majority of people want to play right now.

Market Trends

As of 2014  the leading country for games development is the UK, and according to a poll from several games professionals across Europe, the UK also the best source for games 10 years ago. Its strange that the people that are most playing games are over 45 year olds. And oddly the most used format for are applications on a mobile device, this is probably due to how easy and cheap they are to buy most ranging anywhere from free to around £2, with the odd few being more. This has also made the most popular genre puzzle type games often played by older women. Most of the puzzle games are free on an app store. Also according to the IAB the majority of the British gaming community now consists of women. According to Creative Industries in 2014 the amount of people in Britain that were gaming was around 69%, compared to 49% of people in 2011. and women made up around 52% of these people. The reason women and older people have begun to get into games is because they have been made so easily accessible via places like the app/google store. People however can spend too much time gaming, for example children aged 8 - 15 spend an average of 20 hours gaming a week, compared to people aged 16+ that spend an average of 11.

The digital market for games has grown in recent years to a point where physical copies of games are rarely bought. Around 48% of the population in the UK use digital stores to purchase games, 55% purchase mobile apps and 40% still purchase disk copies. The main things that pus the digital market in the UK is when new technology in developed. The UK has a very high end market for smart phones and has around 30 million phones in use, this is one of the major reasons the UK's app stores are the biggest in Europe. The fact that we have so many smartphones also drives the social media market up. Market trends suggest that mobile users send about 50% of the time on their on social media site like Facebook or Twitter. Social media does however boost the use of games due to easy access to other that play the same games. The PC download market is also growing exponentially due to online stores like Steam and Uplay. The UK is currently the best place in Europe to invest in the mobile market, a large part of this is because the UK has the largest network of WiFi hotspots in Europe. Games have to effectively market there products to gamers to draw them in.

Industry Trends

Technology is slowly advancing in video games, and one of the newest developments is the idea of VR. These are devices that let the player immerse themselves on another level of the game. However one of the biggest criticisms is that you can only do it alone. Currently the leading developers are working on social versions of VR. Compared to normal gaming VR is more of a physical experience and more attuned to the Nintendo Wii as it puts your whole body into the game. Augmented reality is where a game puts things into the real world, in a game. An example of this is the game Pokemon Go this game put Pokemon in real life locations that you could go out and find. This was a massive game at the time, however this may not have been due to the AR but the fact that it was Pokemon related. Every couple of years the current edition of consoles get an update, sometimes its just a slimmer version of the previous console however, there can be major updates as well, for example the Xbox One S also supports 4K movies. A recent development,especially in apps, is freemium this is a way the free games that attract thousands of downloads get make money other than ad revenue. Ads actually play a large part of it as one of the main purchases is normally no ads. A lot of games often include in game currency that is available to purchase with real money, the cost of this can range anywhere from £2 - £99, from what I've seen.

In conclusion, the trends of the gaming industry are quite varied. Market trends are what is popular within the community, like genre and console. However the trends of the industry are more focused around the development of new technology and how this impacts upon the market trends.