There will be 300,000 South African gamers by 2015 – four times as many as the 85,000 that were around in 2010.
This is according to the “South African Entertainment and Media Outlook 2011–2015” by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Smart people work there, so the report must be true.
The report notes that the low volume of South African gamers is due to low broadband penetration rates in South Africa, but that’s about to change. Broadband subscribers are set to increase nearly five-fold to 2.85 million by 2015, with around 10.5 percent of those users gaming online.
More gamers means more spending on games, which PwC picked up on in the report. They expect South African gamers to spend R241 million on online games by 2015, up from R7 million this year – and that’s a lot.
PwC also highlight that the PC master race is a dying breed. The PC games market declined by 7 percent in 2010, as more attention was paid to other parts of the gaming market. It would’ve been worse had it not been for the growth of MMORPGs.
So next time you want to troll a WoW gamer, give him a hug instead.
Finally, the report had this to say, “The market for handheld gaming consoles is coming under pressure in a convergent world as the iPad and advanced smartphones offer gaming in addition to Internet browsing, social media and entertainment.”
It looks like these smart people read my column, good on them.
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