Tag Archives: online console market

Screen Digest has issued a report stating that despite the popularity of the online games market, publishers are gingerly adopting the trend due to retail relationships.

Not wanting to subvert these relationships, publishers are instead releasing titles that either cost little to digital distribute, or are undermarketed titles. Because of this cautious attitude, Screen Digest believes that consoles currently on the market are nothing more than transition devices that will become obsolete before their capabilities are realized.

Therefore, online downloads will not become viable until the next hardware generation is released.

“While the online console market is growing strongly and will provide welcome revenue in later years, today’s consoles have been consigned to the important, but ultimately limited, online market role of ‘transitional’ devices as the industry only slowly makes its way to a more online-console orientated framework.

“There will be a substantial addressable online market to exploit towards the end of the cycle, but it is likely that this opportunity will remain significantly untapped and it won’t be long before the industry will be forced once again to prepare itself for the next generation of hardware.”

The report indicates that ‘active online TV consoles’ will reach 79 million by 2010 but at the same time, users will only spend $1.2 billion annually on online downloads by 2013 which will be just 11 percent of the current-gen console market.

Full thing past the break.

More »