Report - $74 billion to be spent on gaming in 2011

A new report from Gartner Inc. has predicted that $74 billion will be spent on gaming this year, and the firm expects $112 billion to be spent in the sector in 2015.

According to the report titled Market Trends: Gaming Ecosystem 2011, the $74 billion figure is a 10.4 percent increase over $67 billion spent in 2010. Gartner Inc. expects two thirds of the figure will be spent on software alone.

It also declares that during 2011, hardware spend will come in second to software and online spending will follow in last place. Gartner does, however, predict that online gaming will catch up with the rest by 2015 with an growth rate of 27 percent a year until then.

“As the popularity of smartphones and tablets continues to expand, gaming will remain a key component in the use of these devices," said the firms' research analyst Tuong Nguyen. "Mobile games are the most downloaded application category across most application stores. For this reason, mobile gaming will continue to thrive as more consumers expand their use of new and innovative portable connected devices."

"We find that subscription fees are giving way to ‘freemium’ models, in which the game is provided for free to gamers but is monetised through advertising (both in-game advertising and display advertising) and in-game microtransactions, such as the sale of value-added services or virtual-good purchases,” said added research director Brian Blau. “This trend is prevailing given the rise of social gaming, in which online gaming is connected to social networking sites and social networking platforms.”

The firm said mobile technology needs to expand quickly, though, in order to meet the technological demands of most gamers.

Thanks, GI.biz.