Taiwan's Online Game Market Grows 15.2% in 2007: IDC Taiwan

Taipei, Aug. 4, 2008 (CENS)--Taiwan's online game market reached about US$2.9 million in 2007, up 15.2% from US$2.52, according to IDC Taiwan.

IDC's local research showed that several favorable factors have been attracting more and more online gamers in addition to the excitement itself, as well as the high penetration of asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) Internet service and high popularity of both desktop and notebook PCs.

The latest IDC Internet Commerce Market Model (ICMM) version 11.2 survey showed that number of Internet users in Taiwan exceeded 17.5 million people, each of whom spends an average of 36 hours surfing online per month, excluding another 33 hours spent at the office.

IDC Taiwan software market analyst Yen Jia-wei pointed out that major gaming software companies in Taiwan have been concentrating on developing more online products so as to further develop territories and increase revenues. The MMORPG (Massive-Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) is still the market mainstay on the island. The online gaming market has been expanding thanks to the increasing recreational games promoted by game developers, such as dancing, car racing, various chess games etc., which have been attracting more and more leisure players or newcomers. However, the survey reported, online-gamers often are disloyal when they find more interesting games, game-server instability, or slower- and worse-than-expected game updates, mainly because they have many choices. The average market life of middle- to high-popularity games is often between one to two years.

IDC Taiwan said that the quality, content, and entertainment level are the basic requirements for newly released online games, so the factors that decide the success of a new product include system service stability, game developer's service quality and speed, and security of players' personal data etc.

In addition, the premier market intelligence firm added, game developers should pay more attention to clear market trends, including the inevitable trend of free games etc. More importantly, online gaming has a shifting social role, being recreational and entertainment in the past to virtual communities. Under such development, online game companies should listen more to such communities or even create communities to further consolidate player loyalty, or in other words, their revenue performances.