The South African gaming industry continued to grow in 2011 breaking the R1.7 billion mark, according to figures from research company GfK.
Breaking that down, there were 3.86 million physical games sold in 2011 vs 3.48 million in 2010. It's good to see the increase after Do Gaming reported the number of games sold in the year to October 2008 was 3.64 million.
Revenue wise, game sales turned over R915.52 million down from R923.72 million. The drop is in part due to PC game sales which fell from 1.02 million to 927 861 games sold. Although this does not necessarily mean that gamers played less PC games. The likes of Steam and Origin, together with the growth of uncapped ADSL could well mean more gamers are downloading their games.
Videogaming hardware saw a nice jump from 283 312 to 346 560 units sold and gaming peripherals also jumped nicely.
Total sales therefore hit 4.64 million units valued at R1 715 608 975.
It's great to see the local industry growing as opposed to the US industry, which declined eight percent in 2011 although it is substantially larger and the global industry, where game sales declined three percent in total and gaming hardware declined six percent.
While last year was a very successful year for gaming with the release of games like Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, it also saw several game studios close down and with THQ showing more signs of trouble in 2012, it will be interesting to see how the industry performs in 2012. - Do Gaming