Online gaming rakes in over $14.5 billion in 2010

by Larry Everett on Dec 23rd 2010 5:30PM

World of Warcraft, Economy, News items, DC Universe Online, Miscellaneous

Parents of many of the gaming industry professionals would scold them by saying, "You can never make a living playing video games." The industry overcame that stigma many years ago, but online gaming still carried that stench of worthlessness. However, that is no longer the case. ABI Research of Arizona says that online gaming is expected to exceed $14.5 billion this year.

The most staggering figure is the projected influence MMOs have in the overall online gaming industry. A report by ABI Research claims, "The MMO market is expected to be larger in 2010 at $7.6 billion, but will show a lower CAGR of 12.8%, reaching almost $14 billion by 2015." Although the report downplays MMOs, this does mean that over half the revenue for online gaming this year will come from MMOs, and the total MMO revenue will potentially double in just five years.

Games through connected devices, like the PlayStation 3, have promising potential as well, according to the report. This bodes well for cross-platform games like DC Universe Online, but the report also says that console online games will only make up 10% of the total online gaming market.

Next time your parents tell you that video games will never amount to anything, you have a couple of reports to show them that claim otherwise. But good luck convincing them.

Via: Game Politics
Source: ABI Research

Tags: abi-research, dc-universe-online, dcuo, gaming-industry, industry, industry-growth, stock-market, World-of-Warcraft, WoW

Reader Comments (3)

the other 10k went to non-wow games

You still can't make a living making video games. Unless you are either a corporate exec, high level programmer for a company like Blizzard or just an EXTREMELY lucky partner with a successful small botique company, the industry doesn't really pay that well. Artists especially get paid pretty poorly for what they have to do... you get paid more as a mediocre in-house graphic designer at a dentists office.

Interesting to see that the MMO market is as large as $7.6 billion. Goes to show that WoW might be big, but it's by no means dominating the market - its revenue is only in the ballpark of one billion a year.