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US digital games market: May 2013
Consistent with seasonal spending on interactive entertainment, gross revenues for digital games bottomed out in May and totaled $808 million across all categories. Consumer spending continued its overall downward trend as the industry readies itself for major announcements on both the hardware and software side of the business. The two segments that performed best in May were social games, which gained 4% and totaled $124 million, and subscription-based MMOs, which increased 7% and totaled $88 million, month-over-month. Both categories are least affected by seasonal changes, unlike the DLC segment which saw a drop of 8% to $270 million.
The future of social casino is now
The most important moments in the social casino game market’s lifetime are coming up soon. Social casino games have emerged as a massive segment of digital gaming, seeing some of the highest average revenue per paying user of any games, and some of the most loyal and engaged gamers (4-year-old games are still hauling in over $5M a month). But despite the forecasted growth (33% between now and 2016), the casino world is looking increasingly crowded, and many are left wondering what social casino’s encore will be. Some see mobile as the savior, but it’s platform as capable of oversaturation as any other. Others hope that legalized real-money online gambling will be the natural adult stage. However, as with many things in gaming, there likely will not be a single answer, but rather opportunities and rewards will abound for those who know what they’re doing.
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Everything social casino devs need to know about legalized gambling (Part III)
Shortly following Nevada and Delaware in the slow plod to legalized online gambling, New Jersey became the latest player earlier this year. With 8.6M people to Nevada’s 2.7M, it’s the most populous and therefore perhaps most impactful state yet. And with an ailing Atlantic City gambling scene, the promise of real money online games has many excited, enough to note that revenue from online games will reach $1.5B in 5 years. What of social casino devs’ opportunities here? Depends on how they play their cards.
Everything social casino devs need to know about legalized gambling (Part II)
While Delaware was the first to realize real-money online gambling in the US, it wasn’t until Nevada jumped on board in February that people began to take notice (indeed, many publications wrongly glossed over Delaware’s legislation, stating that Nevada was the first state to making online gambling legal). Nevada’s claim to fame, however, was that it was the first to put its money where its mouth is, so to say, and implement real-money with Ultimatepoker.com.
Everything social casino devs need to know about legalized gambling (Part I)
Three key US states–New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware–are in the midst of changing their online gambling legislation. This could provide an important growth driver for the already red-hot social casino space. Social game developers are great at making appealing, play-money games. As industry leaders like Zynga are aggressively moving into real-money gambling, the question arises whether social game companies are any good at making real-money games. So before you “faites-vous jeux,” let’s take a critical look at all this deregulation. In a series of three articles, we’ll detail the emergence of this changing landscape and what it means for the major players in digital gaming.
Three reasons why the Dutch games industry doesn’t suck.
This week I’m speaking at the Festival of Games in Amsterdam. It’s a curious thing, really, considering how tiny Holland is, and yet how active its games industry is. There are only a handful of internationally known game companies, such as Guerrilla Games (Killzone!) and Spilgames. But there’s a substantial number of small and medium-sized companies out there. So I figured I’d go and check it out.
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