Europe to pass Americas as biggest video market by FY '09

[mrstickball]

Retrasado said:

mrstickball said:
It should...Europe has 200 million more people than the United States..Depending on what countries your tracking for the argument.

Are we talking NA vs. Europe, or something else? No one single country will overtake the US as the biggest console market for another decade or two, unless a few crazy scenarios take place.

another decade or two? Honestly, I think it's going to take a lot longer than that for China to overtake the US, but otoh, they have more people online than the US so who knows?

OT: I thought it had already overtaken the US....

 

China has come a long way, very quickly.

According to Internet World Stats, China now has 253,000,000 internet users compared to the United States' at roughly 220,000,000 users. However, for Broadband, the US still leads by a decent margin (although it's shrinking).

Money wise, I question how much China can spend, at the moment, on video games. GDP per family is well behind the US, so I doubt there's quite as much disposable income that can be spent on legitimate video games - PC or Console. China could take over the US, and I agree that they're the only one that can, but it's going to be awhile - Not only in actual terms, but in tracking too, as we don't have a ton of data.

According to this, China is projected to have around $2.5b in revenue from 'Online Game Operators' and a huge portion coming from internet cafes. It's hard to draw any direct comparisons at the moment.

Ultimately, and hopefully, China lifts the ban on normal video game consoles, and allows the Big 3 in to sell their consoles - Maybe then we can see regional data at some point to see exactly how the consoles can sell in China outside of banned imports.

Samuel -

The issue about GDP is that you have to take into consideration the fact that when they do pass the US in GDP, it's spread out among 4 times the citizens, which means there is about 1/4th the income per household, which translates to less overall ability to spend on luxury items. PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) for Chinese citizens, at the moment, ranks 82nd in the world at $7,800 per citizen...Compared to the United States which is above $45,000 per citizen, and Europe which is very high too.

On another economic note: Brazil is undergoing great growth due to it's agricultural section. In the coming years, it'll be interesting to track it's growth. It could be a boon for the South American market, and become a strong emerging player in Top-5 Video Game sales.