PC gaming hits $10.7 billion in revenues worldwide

Venture Beat — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:43:35 -0400

Computer games have a perception problem amid the higher visibility of the console video game market. But the PC games industry isn’t anything to sneeze at, with worldwide sales of $10.7 billion in 2007.

The PC Gaming Alliance. a group of hardware and software companies, released the figures from its “Horizons” report at the Games Convention Developers Conference in Leipzig, Germany — now the biggest industry trade show.

Randy Stude, president of the PC Gaming Alliance, said that retail sales were just 30 percent of the total revenue figure. About $4.8 billion of the total came from online games. The biggest chunk of that comes from online games in Asia, which is now approaching half of the world market.

Digital distribution sales, where gamers download a game over the Internet to their computers, approached $2 billion, while ad revenues from websites, portals, and in-game ads accounted for $800 million. Both of those segments are expected to grow substantially in the future. The PCGA collects data from its member companies via a third-party entity. The PCGA was formed earlier this year and so has no data for 2006.