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Forums - Gaming - Describe gaming in your country

Eastern Europe. In one word - piracy.



My Etsy store

My Ebay store

Deus Ex (2000) - a game that pushes the boundaries of what the video game medium is capable of to a degree unmatched to this very day.

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America.
Xbox 360 + 3ds dominates
COD, Kids and Casuals



curl-6 said:
Overpriced. (Though nowhere as much as some other places, admittedly)

we have come a long way over the 7th generation thank god



Troll_Whisperer said:

Describe how gaming is or how you perceive it to be (in some countries there's not a lot of raw numbers).

 

Spain is a medium market, 4th European market and 6th overall in the world.*

 

PlayStation is synonym with gaming. People call a console simply "la Play". The PS3 outsold the Wii handily. PS3 surpassed Wii in 2009 here** and marketshare is 55% PS3, 30% Wii and 15% Xbox360.*** PC gaming is fairly big.

Still, Wii was a success story with families and Xbox did great in a PS country, despite being outsold 4:1. Many people bought an Xbox because it was way cheaper and becasuse it was much more easily pirated.

Yeah, Spain is a major pirate country, pirating is totally socially accepted, which is very sad. The fact that PS3 was difficult to pirate and that you could be banned from online services helped a lot this gen though, buying original is much more normal now thankfully.

When it comes to handhelds, Nintendo is way ahead, though PSP was incredibly popular and even the Vita is not doing badly.

Gen8, I expect PS4 to outsell Xbone 10:1 to be honest. WiiU won't do much at all here either, Nintendo consoles are not really mainstream (bar Wii).

From a personal standpoint, most of my family has PS3s (me, two cousins, my uncle) and most of my friends too. One of my uncles has a small child and has a Wii to play with her, and a friend of mine has an Xbox 360.

 

How about your country?

 

EDIT: Could you guys mention what country you're talking about? So we don't have to click on profiles to find out. Thanks.

 

 

* (http://www.ifema.es/madridgamesweek_01/LaFeria/ElsectordelvideojuegoenEspaña/index.htm)

** (http://zonaforo.meristation.com/espana-ps3-supera-a-wii-y-machaca-en-ventas-a-xbox360-t1454721.html)

*** (http://www.3djuegos.com/noticia/138639/0/playstation-4-ps-vita/sony-pack/lanzamiento/)

I am from Italy, I don't have any data, but that's the same as you said.

Gaming is equal to Playstation, everyone call it 'La Play'. Wii was popular, but not so much and X360 was just a cheaper option of the PS3. People play football (soccer) games on home consoles. 

Gaming is seen as a hobby and for most people as a waste of time.

When it comes to handled, Nintendo is the undisputable king, but PSP was selling fairly good. Now I don't really know, but I believe 3DS is dominating and Vita is lagging far behind.

Handleds are seen as childish console.



Norway.

Soccer is huge in Norway (per Norwegian there are more people going to matches in our top league than premier league, not to mention that Norwegian football teams suck) so Fifa's only competitor is COD, which racks up sales as well. Other than that handheld gaming is pretty big, Nintendo is the only one we have ever cared for though, and Sony holds the throne.

Also, in the electro class at my school (first year "high school") there are roughly 50 students, about 30 of which play Pokemon.



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Sweden.
PC gaming still is where it's all at. LAN parties (where everyone brings their computer, and stays up the whole night playing games) are an extremely common thing to do with friends. Also, the biggest official LAN in the world, not Europe, the WORLD, is in Jönköping, Sweden. It's called Dreamhack.
Nintendo ruled console gaming up until after the N64, and still is bigger here proportionally to many countries in the world, and especially Europe..



I LOVE ICELAND!

Poland started official gaming way later due to comunism. We didn't have NES or SNES, there were NES knock offs though, like very popular Pegasus. Game Boy and GBA were popular, but not as Nintendo Game Boys, just every kid had a Game Boy. That's the main reason for no nostalgia factor for Nintendo, and imo a big reason why Nintendo is non existant in our market, people see the current Nintendo offering and see it's shit. Well, no official Nintendo of Poland, Stadt Bauer (or something) doing lousy job as a Nintendo distributor (there is a new distribution company now I think), and overall the fact that Nintendo doesn't give a shit about our country, doesn't help either. Btw. the phrase "Nintendo of Poland" is a running joke among Polish gaming journalists

The first PlayStation was still a pretty exotic piece of hardware, hard to come by, and I imagine extremely expensive. I recall my brother bringing one from France in like 1997 as a gift from his father. That was the shit :D I know of only one friend who also had a PlayStation 1 Slim, but way later.
PlayStation 2 launched here along with the European launch, I remember it being 3000PLN (around 900$ not counting inflation, for today) in the Sony Store in Warsaw. So yeah it was expensive. But it also sparked the console gaming in Poland. Mainly due to being easily pirated and eventually coming down in price. It was very popular.
Xbox had some shelf space, I don't recall seeing GameCube at all.
PSP was way more popular than DS.
Now 7th gen, Poland is finally in UE, so Wild West free market economy is leashed a bit. Consoles have normal prices (but retailers fuck us on exchange rates even today). PlayStation is domination, PS2 is still selling gangbusters, but X360 launches here for a good price and is easy to play pirated games on, PS3 on the other hand is expensive and jailbreak is introduced way later (and is still more hussle). That makes X360 really cut into PlayStations marketshare.

Fast forward, cause it takes too long. We are a PC-centric, I would say a relatively small market still, with a rampant piracy up until lately, when things are improving, we even have social campaings for anti-piracy (although targeted at art and music) but when there was that anti-piracy act worked on in UE, there were demonstrations and fucking riots against it country-wide of course everything in the name of freedom in the internet...so yeah there are still a shit ton of people who don't want to pay for their entertainment.
PlayStation is still synonymous with console among casuals and older people. Console gaming is becoming more and more mainstream, mainly thanks to Sony, who popularised it during the PS2 days, and are now pushing big marketing campaigns for PS3 and PS4 in TV, cinemas, billboards etc. As well as getting our popular domestic actors and celebrities (big names here) to do dubbing in Sony exclusives, while other first party publishers don't usually do dubbing at all. That makes PlayStation the biggest force in console market, especially among gamers, but X360 gained a lot of the market pie, is still selling well, but from what I see mainly to parents with little kids in shops, that buy Kinect and a Disney game. Microsoft acknowlegded that, and this holiday we had a big TV marketing campaign, focused only on Kinect.
But Microsoft apparently thinks that Poland isn't important enough and they didn't launch the Xbone here within the Tier 1 countries. Meanwhile PS4 has, and is selling like hotcakes. Surprisingly (I'm genuinely surprised) it's sold out in offcial retailers in Warsaw everywhere, as well as in Saturns and Media Markts country-wide, so I assume, we could safely say it's sold out in Poland overall. The lower price, which is still a big differenciator here and headstart, will no doubt help PS4 regain what it lost during the 7th gen. I'm not expecting a domination like in Spain, but 4:1-5:1 I'm sure is not out of question.

Ohh and one last thing to once again show how non existant is Nintendo here SCEPoland CEO, or other higher up, can't remember now, said that PSVita after it's first month, outsold 3DS's LTD in Poland, and that's why I love my country :D

The only tracker here I think is GFK Polonia, I will try to get some numbers regarding marketshare, size of the market, most popular publishers, and some sales numbers.



So it is happening...PS4 preorder.

Greatness Awaits!

UK:
Community: American wannabes.
Industry: Biggest entertainment industry with bad press (I can't think of a single TV show let alone Channel dedicated to it).
Reality: Even in terms of play, everyone plays what they are happy with but for casuals it's CoD and FIFA.



Hmm, pie.

Portugal

CoD, FIFA/PES, Sony land.

You even take out your DS/3DS out in the public, people start looking at you funny,



Current PC Build

CPU - i7 8700K 3.7 GHz (4.7 GHz turbo) 6 cores OC'd to 5.2 GHz with Watercooling (Hydro Series H110i) | MB - Gigabyte Z370 HD3P ATX | Gigabyte GTX 1080ti Gaming OC BLACK 11G (1657 MHz Boost Core / 11010 MHz Memory) | RAM - Corsair DIMM 32GB DDR4, 2400 MHz | PSU - Corsair CX650M (80+ Bronze) 650W | Audio - Asus Essence STX II 7.1 | Monitor - Samsung U28E590D 4K UHD, Freesync, 1 ms, 60 Hz, 28"

England: Call of Duty, Fifa and Xbox.

And whatever flavour of the month.