Freemium Games Growth & 2011 vs 2012

I’ve been reading this whitepaper on monetisation and freemium games:

As a result of the vast changes in the global games industry that occurred the last years we have seen big losses e.g. ‘TakeTwo’, ‘Nintendo’ and ‘Gamestop’ as well as huge gains for e.g.’RiotGames, ‘Mojang/MineCraft’ and ‘Wargaming.net’ in terms of revenue and profit. Online and mobile gaming have rapidly become very competitive. The amount of new high quality games is much higher than the healthy double-digit growth of consumer spending, putting pressure on game revenues. Asia’s total games market continues to grow at an enormous pace. Asian companies increasingly seek expansion ‘overseas’ and use their cash to set up offices in the West or acquire companies that will give them the ability to deliver game experiences tailored especially for Western gamers.

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In the graph below, the result of the uptake of Free-to-Play and mobile gaming is demonstrated: a higher share and absolute number of paying gamers, but a lower average in spending. The overall result in Western markets is a modest rise in total consumer spending on games. The outlook is positive as average spending is expected to rise, especially amongst the many ‘first-time spenders’.

2011 vs 2012 Gaming Stats. From: Key facts and insights on Cross-Screen Monetization of Games in Europe and the US.