Now we must all become GAMERS (LINK)
July 9th 2008 00:03
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As a child of one of the first generations to grow up with video games, I can still vividly recall my parents' exasperation when I became engrossed in this new and alien entertainment. “It's just dots of lights chasing other dots of light around a screen!”, my father would dismissively remark.
In the most technical of terms he was entirely correct. The games of the 1980s were little more than dots of light chasing each other around. And for many people, whose perception is still stuck in those early primitive years of Space Invaders, video games are the pointless stuff of children, adolescents and men who haven't grown out of adolescence.
But last week's financial results from Game Group tell a different tale. The UK's largest specialist video game retailer has bucked the dismal business news by reporting that its like-for-like sales - sales at stores open more than a year - had climbed 28 per cent in the first half of this year. Its first-half profits will top £33 million, beating the most optimistic forecasts of City analysts by a third.
Game's stunning success in recent years has led to a huge stock market valuation. This mid-range high street retailer enjoys a valuation that is almost three times higher than Taylor Wimpey, the country's biggest construction firm. Game's impressive performance is not a one-off. Nintendo is now Japan's second most valuable company - trailing the car maker Toyota but ahead of giants such as Canon and Panasonic.
This commercial success should not surprise us. It is the result of the revolution that has seen the video game industry escape from the messy bedroom of the teenage boy.
The average age of a video game customer now hovers around the late twenties to early thirties. The variation on either side of that average reveals a fascinating picture, too. Many of the first generation of child gamers now approaching their forties have children of their own. Whole families now gather around a game console, just as in previous generations the family gathered to watch a video or Morecambe & Wise on TV or to play Monopoly together.
If you don't play videogames, you may consider this whole revolution irrelevant to you. The videogame industry - and stock market investors - disagree. The incredible strength of shares in companies such as Nintendo isn't a reflection of their present success; it's an expression of the market's belief that this industry still has an enormous amount of room to grow. Not slow annual growth as new consumers join today's ageing “gamer generations” - but the explosive growth that comes when everyone is converted to playing video games.
extracted From: Timesonline link above, please use it for the full article.
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