Gaming: 2010.(Editorial)

It may come as no shock to learn that video and computer gaming will continue to be the hottest market the in the entertainment industry, at least for the rest of this decade. Even mainstream market researchers are now making this bold forecast. For example, PricewaterhouseCoopers--one of several mega firms that have weighed in on computer graphics-related markets recently--has released a study, "Global Entertainment and Media Outlook," which predicts that electronic games will continue to be the fastest-growing segment of the industry during the next five years. The report concludes that the electronic gaming market will expand at a compound annual growth rate of 20 percent and will top $55 billion in annual revenue by the end of the decade.

However, what may be more surprising to discover are the factors that will be responsible for this growth and the opportunities that will present themselves to digital content professionals as a result.

Clearly, the most powerful force driving the games market is consumer demand. According to a new study from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), "Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry," more than half (54 percent) of all US households have purchased or plan to purchase one or more games this year. Moreover, ESA's latest research shows that today's game players will likely be "gamers for life"--because a majority expect to play as much or more in the next decade as they do today--while each year the ranks of new players will continue to swell.

Of course, such demand for gaming is based on an assumption that we have come to take for granted, namely that gaming technologies will advance at the same dramatic pace we have seen in the past. For example, 10 years ago, the top-selling titles were Donkey Kong Country and Mortal Kombat. But these games are "simple and charming by today's standards," says ESA president Doug Lowenstein.

Will gaming technology continue to advance at the same rate? Absolutely, and not just in computing power, but in a host of other areas that will enable the kind of innovation that will expand gaming's popularity. In fact, a new assessment from Deloitte Research, "Moore's Law and Electronic Games," outlines the advances expected in technologies that could influence electronic gaming. A brief summary reveals the following trends:

Processing: Moore's Law--which states that the transistor density of a silicon chip will double every two years--is alive and well in the game-console market. In fact, the next generation of consoles, which are expected to debut at the end of 2005 or early 2006, will feature central processing units (CPUs) capable of more than one trillion calculations per second, nearly 10 times faster than current models.

Chip sets: Besides console CPUs, other chips--including graphics processing units (GPUs), random-access memory (RAM), and even mobile phone processors--will follow the same trajectory predicted by ...