Heading home

Apparently July 31 2005 was a pretty cold day in Sydney, but for a Pom that had just got here (Australia) from the UK, I thought it was practically a heat wave. My mate picked me and my partner Malin up from the airport and took us for a tour of Sydney – the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House, Kirribilli and Bondi…. I’d never seen a beach like it in my life. Over the past (almost) four years, we have fallen in love with Australia, even got into Rugby League and developed a bit of an Aussie twang. So, it’ll come as a surprise to some that me and Malin have decided to head back to Europe.

What’s behind this decision then? Well, we have decided to expand our family and after having one kid in Australia on our own, we thought we might need a little bit more support this time around. To put this in perspective, in the two and a half years since we’ve had Freja, me and Malin have had a total of one night off as parents, now we love our little bundle of joy, but the odd grandparent’s baby sitting session wouldn’t go a miss! And that’s the other big thing, being so far away from our families.

We’re heading off at the end of the month and it’ll be both a happy and a sad moment for us, Australia has given us so much – especially our little girl Freja. My friend Ed, who also recently left Australia to return home (to America) has inspired my to post this on the blog and I’ll probably be adding a few more posts like this over the coming weeks as the clock count down – things I love about Australia and will miss. So, for the first one – State of Origin. Now, as a Pom I have been spoilt with the English Premier League and the soccer World Cup, but I can hand on heart say that I have never seen a more emotional, intense rivalry in any sporting event. Despite living in NSW for my entire time in Australia, most of my friends are from Queensland and the friend that picked me up from the airport is a born-and-breed Brisbane boy, so from the start I backed Queensland – and thank God! It’s not often that a pom backs a winner!

Let me entertain...me

According to analyst reports out last week, people are starting to think about games in a whole new light. So much so that gaming will become the most popular form of entertainment in the UKover the coming year. The boffins are predicting that games sales will rise by a whopping 42 per cent to the dizzying heights of £4.64bn. Compare that to the total predicted sales for music AND video at £4.46bn and I think you’ll find that we have a new king of the castle.

Now, I love music, but I also love gaming (probably love gaming more) so I don’t want to be giving the music industry a hard time – but the figures don’t lie. Apparently the video games industry has more than doubled in the last 5 years while music sales have struggled. You might be thinking that the ongoing issue of online downloads has caused problems for the music industry, but the same figures show that downloads only represent 4 per cent of totals sales. Want to know what the big growth area for the music and video industry has been? Online sales of DVDs and CDs – go figure.

MyTake – Video games aren’t cheap, costing you around about 3 or 4 times the amount that a CD would cost you, so the more popular gaming becomes the more substantial the sales figures will be. But, you can’t take this achievement away from the gaming industry, it’s been in the pipeline for a long time. The interesting space to watch is what the “multitasking entertainer” is going to be doing in the coming years. We may only have one set of “eyeballs”, but we’re consuming up to 3 different types of entertainment at one time and that’s probably going to get even more intense.