New European Study on Video Games Industry available

„Video games, though comparatively new, already form a significant and growing share of the media and content industries. The global video game market was estimated at some €45 – 50 billion in 2009, and is expected to grow four times faster than the media and entertainment market as a whole. The former is expected to grow by almost 70% by 2013, whereas the latter is expected to grow by only 17%. In the UK, the video game market outgrew the cinema market in 2009 and playing games online is now as popular as downloading music and video.“ (p.13) Thus states the new report with a long title: BORN DIGITAL / GROWN DIGITAL: Assessing the Future Competitiveness of the EU Video Games Software Industry.
The report was put together by G. De Prato, C. Feijóo, D. Nepelski, M. Bogdanowicz and J.P. Simon and reflects the findings of the JRC-IPTS study on the Video games Industry, with a focus on two specific activities: online and mobile video games.
The study analyses the video game software industry, its market potential, its value chain organisation and business models and its current line of evolution, so as to outline major emerging technologies and to investigate their disruptive potential. It also assesses the strengths and weaknesses of EU firms, in order to highlight drivers, opportunities and challenges for improving the future competitiveness of the EU video game software industry.
Download of Report at: European Commission Joint Research Center
The research is based on internal and external expertise, literature reviews and desk research, several workshops and syntheses of the current state of the knowledge. The results were reviewed by experts and in dedicated workshops. The report concludes that the general expectations for the next years foresee a speeded up migration of contents and services to digital, in a scenario of rapidly increasing convergence of digital technologies and integration of media services taking advantage of improved and permanent network connections. The role of the so-called creative content industry is expected to increase accordingly. Communication services and media industry will co-evolve on the playground of the Internet of services, along with a product to service transformation of the software market in general. In this general context the Video games Software industry plays and is expected to play a major role. The games industry may become a major driver of the development of networks as it has been in the past for the development of computer hardware.
Download of Report at: European Commission Joint Research Center