Money Spent On Gaming To Reach $112 Billion in 2015: Gartner

The amount of money that will be spent worldwide on gaming will reach $112 billion by 2015. While the money spent on gaming in 2011 will exceed $74 billion in 2011, a growth of 10.4 per cent from the previous year when the gaming expenditure was estimated at $67 billion according to Gartner, Inc.

Out of the $74 billion spent on gaming this year, a major chunk of $44 billion will be spent on the gaming software followed by gaming hardware and online gaming, which will be $17.8 billion and $11.9 billion respectively. The gaming software is a category which will continue to dominate the gaming expenditure throughout the five year period till 2015

"This large market size means that many consumers embrace gaming as a core piece of their entertainment budget and will continue to play as long as game publishers deliver compelling and fun games" said Fabrizio Biscotti, research director at Gartner.

Even in the Indian context gaming is fast becoming popular. The introduction of high quality games on personal computers and the growing popularity of gaming consoles in the country is only an indication of things to come.

Additionally the mobile gaming scenario is still an untapped gold mine in the country. With the decreasing price of the mobile handsets (due to cut-throat competition between companies) and the increasing popularity of high configuration smartphones in India, high quality gaming on mobile phones is no longer a fantasy.

Sony Ericsson, a mobile handset company had recently launched a Play Station certified mobile phone called Xperia Play which is exclusively to feed the gaming needs of the masses. Also Micromax, an Indian mobile handset company tied-up with Nazara Technologies for an exclusive partnership for embedding popular EA games titles in selected handsets.