A new report from analyst firm IDC anticipates that China, India and other fast growing game markets in developing countries will drive PC game revenues to US$24 billion in 2017.
The hardcore audience is on the rise for F2P games as well, IDC notes. “It’s been tough sledding for most casual-leaning PC game genres in the past year,” said IDC research director Lewis Ward. “Most of the growth is coming from hardcore-oriented freemium titles such as Tencent’s and Riot Games‘ League of Legends… and a handful of Chinese massively multiplayer online role-playing games.”
IDC also expects North American digital PC game earnings to decline over the next three years, while the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) will see five per cent annual growth to 2017.
As reported earlier, a survey from analyst firm SuperData revealed that Asian companies dominated online PC game microtransaction earnings worldwide last year.
China’s Tencent led SuperData’s list of top grossing games, as both publisher of the number one title CrossFire (US$957 million) and owner of League of Legends (US$624 million) developer Riot Games, which placed second.
Other Asian companies in the top ten included third, fifth and tenth place (in partnership with Valve) holder Nexon (Dungeon Fighter Online, US$426 million; Maple Story, US$326 million; Counter-Strike Online, US$121 million), as well as sixth place NCSoft (Lineage I, US$257 million).
