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.
2 comments:
As someone who is involved in the music industry this is a sad, but true, article.
I blame myspace for a lot of the problem.. Too many bands, too easy for fans to hear them online, no one buys cds anymore, etc. It's epic fail type stuff.
We see less and less kids at gigs these days, most of them either just hang out in the front bar getting pissed and not watching the bands, or they save their money for the 'latest and greatest' festival every other weekend.
The music industry in Australia has massive problems at the moment, no one has the bollocks to put their hands up and say it though.
I think that the industry needs to work together and agree upon a simple and universal online purchasing program that people can understand and use easily. I buy all my music through iTunes because I know and understand. Because the industry fought so long and hard against the online space, it's now well behind the rest of the pack....
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