The evergrowing gaming industry seems highly popular amongst the Generation Y and Citizen 2.0 teenagers. But don’t be fooled if you assume that the older generation lack interest in this department. Classic arcade games, older consoles and even the infamous World of Warcraft has drawn attention of millions irrespective of age.

Example, I personally met a 40yrs+ man at Play, a symphony concert held in the Sydney Opera House who gave me a run down on his lifestyle. 8am – 6pm at work, 6pm – 7pm at the gym, 7pm - 8pm dinner and household chores, 8pm – 12 midnight he sat in front of his computer roaming around Stormwind City and the like of World of Warcraft. It immediately hit me that his social life was simply virtual.

How wrong was I! World of Warcraft has triggered so many real social events, from gamers physically attending a funeral of another gamer, people meeting online resulting in weddings and the list goes on. It wasn’t until 10 minutes of his conversation with some of gamers in my group did I realise that they talked about their next quest, and what their next weekend plans were for the in-game experience. 41 per cent of Australian gamers are female and 8 per cent are seniors, according to the IEAA.

Now if a 40+ year old has the time for this, let’s not start imagining what a 13 year old can do after a day from school. It is no wonder that the enormous gaming industry has recorded just over 1 billion AU$ in revenue over a period of 1 year. This is a record in Australia for the financial year 2006/2007. With newly released consoles such as the Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii and last year’s Xbox 360 and Nintendo DS, Christmas and birthday presents for the teenagers are no longer a hard thinking process. Xbox 360 and PS3 games selling at an average of $100 a pop adds a significant amount to the $1bn figure.In conversation with other gamers, it has become apparent that with Video Games as a source of entertainment it compromises for their expensive nights out for a social lifestyle with friends. Adding up the costs for drinks, food, ridiculous door entry fees and the likes can add up to about $100 – $150 per night – equal to the cost of a new game that could take days and weeks of game play to achieve the final goal. World of Warcraft for example has roughly a $16 per month cost to play online. Compare that to 2 bottles of your finest beer.Other forms of entertainment in Australia include Cinema Box Office, DVDs, Books and now Video Games is being more and more accepted.

What figures can we see for 2007/2008? If the increase from the previous financial year till the end of 2007 was 15%, the answer purely depends on what the gaming manufacturers are doing to entice the market with more consoles and developing ever so realistic 3D graphic games.

*Total games industry revenues in the year to June 30, 2006 were $1.03 billion, up 15 per cent from the previous year. The figure covered sales of games discs, consoles and peripherals.

Source – smh.com.au http://www.smh.com.au/news/games/games-industry-passes-1b-mark/2007/07/30/1185647789853.html