Analyst: Western MMOGs worth $1.5B by 2011

You don't have to be a game-news junkie to know that massively multiplayer online games are big business. With more than 8 million players, World of Warcraft has become such a phenomenon that it's been sent up on South Park. The Burning Crusade, the first expansion for the game, sold more than 2.4 million copies internationally in the 24 hours after its January 17 release. (It has since gone on to top 3.5 million units worldwide.)

According to a new report from media-research firm Screen Digest, MMOGs generated roughly $1 billion in revenue worldwide in 2006. Of that sum, $299 million came from Europe and $576 million came from North America. The British company estimates that around 87 percent of the "Western" MMOG market's $875 million of revenue--roughly $761 million--was from subscription fees, the genre's traditional source of income.

While $875 is a princely sum, Screen Digest predicts the Western MMOG market will nearly double in size in the next four years to $1.5 billion. The report's authors believe that the jump will be in part due to new revenue streams that are being introduced into MMOGs, including in-game advertising and selling virtual items for real cash.

"During the past few years the Western landscape for massively multiplayer online games has become increasingly fragmented following the introduction of new genres of games including social networking, virtual pet rearing and virtual world building titles," said report author Piers Harding-Rolls. "These new games and platforms have brought with them many new gamers and also new business models that are generating revenue that is largely incremental to the incumbent subscription business."

Screen Digest believes the most growth in the MMOG market will be in Europe in general, and in France specifically. However, it believes that Germany will remain the biggest market for the genre on the continent through 2011.