[English] 'games transcend languages and cultures'

[Stephen Loosley]

WebProNews 
January 13, 2007
http://www.WebProNews.com

The Year Of The Online Game?
Jason Lee Miller | Staff Writer

2005 was the year of the social network. In 2006, online video 
was the chief cause of acquisition hysteria. Will 2007 be the year 
of the online gaming site? Why not? Where else do you find an 
audience so devoted they'll forfeit sleep and food? A growing 
audience that is loyal, habitual, and young seems ripe for the 
picking.

Blizzard Entertainment announced yesterday that World of Warcraft, 
the subscription-based online battle so compelling to gamers all 
over the world that people have died of exhaustion, has surpassed
eight million users: 

Two million in the US, 1.5 million in Europe, and 3.5 million in China.

In Australia, the mania is for Runescape, which holds a 7.23 
percent market share of gaming site visitors. Hitwise's Sandra 
Hanchard writes that, in this region of the world (Asia-Pacific 
region), more than one in five visits in the entertainment category
visits a gaming site. 

Well, it's closer to a quarter: 23.86 percent of visits were to
online gaming sites, dwarfing multimedia sites' 12.12 percent,
and movies' 5.92 percent.  

"While we've seen the recent explosive growth of YouTube and 
video sharing," says Hanchard, "it would seem that the online 
Games industry is deserving of more attention by marketers and 
advertisers,  given its prominence in site visits." 

.. the Internet is evolving rapidly as a world market, and games
transcend languages and cultures.
--

Cheers all ..
Stephen Loosley
Melbourne, Australia


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