Legal Research

The Year In Virtual Goods By The Numbers

By admin

If we take the market for virtual goods as a metaphor for the market readiness for digital information (articles and books) then these numbers are interesting. Just remember that one of the biggest markets for virtual games is women in their 30′s and 40′s. It’s not just about kids. Also, note that the gaming industry at $60US billion (excluding gambling) dwarves most other publishing (books, news, periodicals, etc.). Just see how many friends you can get to admit their addition to Scrabble, Poker, Angry Birds, Farmville, Cityville, etc. and ask them if that’s too different for them to conceive of as similar to e-goods for information…

The Year In Virtual Goods By The Numbers
via TechCrunch

Here is a look a back at 2010′s virtual goods sales.

- $7,300,000,000: expected global revenue generated by the virtual goods industry in 2010.
- $2,100,000,000: The projected size of the US virtual goods market in 2011.
- 80,000,000: the all-time high number of Farmville players.
- 20: percentage of Electronic Art?s overall revenue generated by digital sales.
- 90,000,000: number of Pet Society virtual goods sold every single day.
- $635,000: New world record for the single largest purchase in an online game,
- 4,000,000: total number of items in IMVU?s virtual goods catalog, making it the world?s largest.
- 10% (and growing): percentage of overall item sales in OurWorld generated by the resale market.
- 220,000: number of ?Summertime avatar baseball caps sold in Roblox, a blocky MMO playground.
- 15,000,000: number of virtual hot dogs eaten by non-playable characters in LOLapps? Ravenwood Fair
- Two: the factors that drive players to buy upper-tier items in online games, as opposed to just spending $0.99 here and there. The first is Value and the other big factor is Rarity

By this time next year, these numbers will look small.”

So, is this the market that is training a lot of folks and preparing them for the full scale virtual market for e-books, e-learning, e-articles, e-zines, e-subscriptions, and more?

I think so.

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on January 02, 2011 (boomark / email).