2004 Web and Downloadable Games White Paper 

IGDA Online Games SIG 

1. 

Asian Consumers 

The South Korea game market is broad in reach, with a wide audience of players at all ages.  China, 

given that it has set an age restriction for entering PC cafes, requiring consumers to be 18 years and 

older, is limited to more hard core gamers. Japan is a more nascent market vis a vis online gaming, but 

seems to be dominated more by home usage in the K 12 age groups. 

C. 

Market Analysis and Estimates 

IDC recently released a research paper with estimates that revenue from downloadable game sales in 

2003 was over $52.7 million and will be over $760 million by 2007

4

. With the current month to month 

growth in sales at around 10% per month, this level of revenue is plausible; however, there are some 

signs that the growth in the downloadable and web games space has begun to slow. Now that online 

game consumers are more aware of the available products and have had an opportunity to make a 

judgment of their value, the online segment must now figure out how to sustain this burst of activity into a 

true game industry segment. If this can be accomplished, the $760MM mark set by IDC might be reached 

and surpassed before the start of 2007. 

1. 

European Analysis 

North America's population has grown to just over 320 million

5

. In comparison, Europe's population 

(including Russia) has reached almost 730 million

6

. Of those populations, North America has 265 million 

Internet users, while Europe has 203 million. However, in North America the overwhelming majority of 

these Internet users speak English. In Europe the top 10 markets comprise nearly 80% of the population, 

but only 35 million speak English as their official language. 

With about 44 million Internet users, Germany remains at the top of Europe's Internet population charts. 

The UK follows with 35 million, and France with 22 million. When looking for potential sales opportunities, 

it is useful to look for the site with the most traffic. In these countries major online destinations are: 

Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, eBay, Wanadoo, T online, Lycos, and Tiscali. Nearly all of these are multi 

national portals that also operate within the US.  

4

 http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=pr2003_09_16_111345 

5

 http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats2.htm 

6

 http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats4.htm 

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