Virtual goods market will grow

From an historic standpoint, the gaming industry as a whole is relatively young.
Still, in the past years, it has grown to be a serious commercial sector, attracting investors and venture capitalists, trying to get their share of the financial success. And, since there has to be someone forecasting the industry’s whims, there are now economic and financial experts evaluating the status quo.

One of these expert organizations is Lazard Capital Markets. The company has taken a good look at the gaming industry and determined what many traditional producers already felt in 2009: software sales are going down due to the economic crisis). However, this only concerns “flat” software, meaning software available in retail stores on a CD, DVD, Blueray or memory chip. Online gaming, on the other hand, is booming and sustains the industry’s growth despite the sluggish software business.
According to analyst Colin Sebastian, this trend is supposed to continue:
“We expect that mobile, online and social games will be responsible for about 40 percent of this year’s sales in the gaming industry. That provides gaming companies with an enormous possibility for growth outside the traditional console and handhelds market.”

Sebastian also confirms what previous studies by other analysts have shown: in 2011, the worldwide sale of ingame items (“virtual goods”) is estimated to reach $1 billion. This would mean that the worldwide sales of virtual goods will outperform the entire real-world economy of the Seychelles.