Size of Gaming Industry???

[Talvisota]

Hey all you fellow gamers out there,

Doing some research for a project for business school and I was trying to get my hands around the size of the gaming industry as a whole. Anybody have any information on this, or does anyone know a source of information on the RPG market in general?

A good statistic could be sales of the PHB 3.0 and 3.5 since release, for example, or something along those lines. From there, at least, you could extrapolate with a few assumptions.

Thanks in advance if anyone posts some info. Game on.

 

[johnsemlak]

THere's some useful info in this article

In particular, Dancy mentions that he believes WotC sold 100,000 copies of the PHB in 2002.

 

[Talvisota]

In what article?

 

[MEG Hal]

THere's some useful info in this article

In particular, Dancy mentions that he believes WotC sold 100,000 copies of the PHB in 2002.

We heard 500K of the 3e PHB no numbers on the 3.5e PHB. Ryan Dancey would be the one to contact for numbers, he is a smart guy .

 

[diaglo]

i think you might want to try the wotc site. www.wizards.com
and do a search for personality spotlights with ryan

 

[BiggusGeekus]

The Pen and Paper RPG gaming industry is teeny-tiny. I recall some numbers showing that the quilt-making industry generated more wealth.

The largest selling RPG was the Pokemon RPG which many partents probably bought by mistake. It far outsold D&D 3.0 and likely outsold the combined total of 1e, 2e, and 3.0.

There has been exactly one market study on the gaming industry. At least one that has been made public. It's somewhere on the wizards.com site and was done in 2000 or so. So there isn't much hard data for you to use for your paper.

... apologies for not having specific links/numbers for all of this.

Incidentally, computer gaming is a huge hit. RPGs aren't big sellers but the rest of the computer gaming industry looks like it may outperform Hollywood movies. You'll also find a great deal more market research and information.

 

[Bagpuss]

I guess slightly smaller than the Isle of Man. Was I close? Do I win a prize?

 

[Morrus]

Here is an article in which Ryan Dancey analyses the industry. It's a few years old, but still very relevant:

Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0

 

[Stalker0]

while the industry is small, how's it's growth? As long as its growing well... then the industry is still healthy.

 

[Talvisota]

Fascinating market segmentation research. Too bad it was done pre-3.0, so the data would be different now.

They listed 2.25M play table top RPGs monthly. Going with that statistic (assuming it is correct,) .5M PHBs aren't that much of a market share. I suspect that most pen-paper types have a 3.0 or 3.5 PHB sitting on the bookshelf, even if they play something else regularly.

Thanks for the inputs!