We're big

How big?

• Really big.  The game industry's total sales will overcome those of the movie business this year.
• Really, really big.  Jon Peddie Associates predicts that there will be about 1 billion internet-enabled, 3D-enabled devices in the market by 2004.  This includes PC's, consoles, set-top boxes and possibly other things we don't know about yet.  With DVD drives being included in PlayStation 2 and X-Box, we can start thinking in terms of VCR-like (90%+) penetration of the home market.
• Too big.  In 1999, according to numbers quoted by Hasbro Interactive's Tom Dusenberry, no less than 7,590 games were available on the PC market, and only 199 of them sold 100,000 units or more.  On the console side of things, the situation is not that much better: 2,250 games were on the market, and 288 sold 100,000 copies.  To rise above the crowd, the big boys may spend the rest of the industry into oblivion: Yu Suzuki's RPG for Dreamcast, Shenmue, required the services of 300 people at the end of the project, and it is not hard to believe that it cost 50-60 million dollars in development alone.  Who can compete with that?

Other things to keep in mind:

• At the present time, 60% of online game players are women and 79% are 25 or older.  However, by 2004, kids and teens will account for 60% of the total online player market.
• Only 16% of the PC games on the market are 3D-enabled, and a mere 2% actually require 3D hardware to function.  Despite all of the hype, there is still a great deal of 2D product being shipped, and most of the best-selling PC games are either pure 2D (Deer Whatever, Who Wants to Be a Millionnaire) or would work equally well gameplay-wise without 3D technology (Sim City 3000, Age of Empires II, Baldur's Gate).  Of the top-ten PC sellers of 1999, only Half-Life and probably Microsoft Flight Simulator qualify as must-be-3D games.

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