105: Pawn Takes Megabyte

[Tyler Sigman]

Pawn Takes Megabyte

"At German game shows, press and public flock to see new releases and purchase them - picture an E3 where you can buy the games you see demoed right away. The SPIEL game fest (aka "Essen") regularly grosses crowds of over 100,000 people - 151,000 in 2006! Compare that to Gen Con, the largest specialty game convention in North America, which generally tops out around 25,000. Now consider that Germany is a country with 27 percent of the population of the United States."

Tyler Sigman explains why some of this year's hottest videogames were born in Germany - on paper.


Permalink

 

[Bongo Bill]

Excellent analysis. But I have to wonder why I can never get my own family to play Settlers of Catan....

 

[FunkyJ]

This doesn't seem any different to the Asian market with computer games though.

I've heard (from this very website) that in Asian watercooler chat rotates around games - the latest Starcraft battle, the newest Final Fantasy, etc...

In Asia, games aren't just for kids which seems to be a general feeling in the USA.

I don't mean to be facetious about War and conflict, but given these types of conclusions, maybe the USA need to lose a war or two to discover something that the Asians and Germans seem to get that we (I say We - The UK and Australia are basically the same as the USA) don't.