Aussie games industry set for growth

The Interactive Games and Entertainment Association (iGEA) held its annual industry briefing in Sydney yesterday, where reports from PricewaterhouseCoopers and Roy Morgan predicted high growth rates for the Australian games industry in the next four years.

The PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) annual Australian Entertainment and Media Outlook 2011-2015 predicted the local games sector will grow at a rate of 9.5 percent annually until the year 2015, the highest percentage growth of all entertainment and media sectors including books, magazines, television, radio, and music.

The PwC report shows that games are also the fastest growing media sector globally, growing at a rate of 8.2 percent per year until 2015.

The high growth rate for the games industry in Australia is largely being driven by three factors: broadband, which is set to reach 100 percent penetration in Australia by 2015 due to the National Broadband Network; mobile, which is set to reach over 75 percent penetration by 2015; and the rise of digital modes of distribution. PwC predicts that by 2015, 50 percent of spending in the games sector in Australia will be in digital.

The report also predicts that microtransactions will continue to grow in the casual and social games sector.

The iGEA industry briefing also focused on Australian gaming demographics, led by research from Roy Morgan conducted between April 2006 to March 2011.

According to the Roy Morgan report, 55 percent of Australians over the age of 14 say they play games at least once in a three-month period--20 percent say they play on mobile phones, 35 percent on consoles, 38 percent on PCs, and 9 percent on all three devices.

The Roy Morgan research looked at the growth of mobile gaming in Australia as a case study, reporting that around 20 percent of the Australian population over the age of 14 play mobile games (that is, around 3.7 million people). Of these, 57 percent are aged 25-49 years and are likely to be young parents.

Looking at demographics, female gamers now make up 52 percent of the Australian gaming public, with the predominant age group being 25-34 years. Ninety percent of Generation Z play games compared to 76 percent of Generation Y, 60 percent of Generation X, and 37 percent of Baby Boomers.

According to Ron Curry, CEO of iGEA, the PwC report highlights that the video game industry is a dominant part of the consumer entertainment landscape, both in Australia and overseas.

"It reinforces that it is a constantly changing form of media and I think one of the most interesting things we are seeing is how games are now delivered anytime, anywhere and across a myriad of devices including PDA or mobile, tablet, consoles or PC," Curry said. "As a result there is a natural diverging of revenue streams with predictions that close to 50 per cent of revenue will be from "non-traditional" (boxed) product by 2015.

"There has not just been a huge change in who is playing games, but in how they are playing them and the way they are interacting. The PwC Australian Entertainment and Media Outlook 2011-2015 really highlights both the evolving nature of the industry and its continued growth over the next four years."