Week 2 EOC: Boston Consulting Group- Video Games

The video game market is growing at a rapid pace which is a curse and a blessing at the same time. With this growth a progressive fall in the market is soon to happen. Console creators such as Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360, Nintendo Co.’s Wii and Sony Corp.’s PlayStation are all stars in this market that require heavy investments to finance their rapid growth. Newzoo predicts that "at this pace, global revenues will reach $107 billion in 2017" (http://www.polygon.com/2015/4/22/8471789/worldwide-video-games-market-value-2015). The games associated with these consoles are additional cash cows for the market outside companies like Activision, MTV and EA are creating games that are leading the industry and making it hard for others to compete. Digital distribution and PC gaming is exceeding expectations while free-to-play continues to be a huge factor in the PC gamers market growth, “The big surprise is that an upfront payment business model still seems to do very well” (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-01-28-pc-gaming-market-to-exceed-usd25-billion-this-year-dfc). In the long run the big trend to watch out for is the blurring of platforms between the new consoles and the PC, there are a lot of games that are released on the big named consoles and PC’s. Some believe the launch of new consoles systems will help grow the PC game business because they produce the same games and it’s another platform for developers. The biggest competitor of them all is the release of mobile gaming which is becoming an alternative gaming source and an interactive gaming experience. Google Play’s Android market and Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iPad have become the largest games platform by market share in the world. With games starting at 99 cents and some that are free is forcing big console creators to create mobile versions of popular games so they have a place in the mobile gaming market. “As the market has grown, its interactivity with other platforms has become more important, and the inherently cross-platform nature of the new digital games market means that understanding what happens on mobile is vital for what that means for other devices” (https://www.superdataresearch.com/market-data/mobile-games-market/). TV's are becoming the question mark, where social gaming is on the rise, but will people purchase a TV and the device to participate in this type of gaming ?