There are more gamers around the world today than ever before.
How is your research different from other companies?
Traditionally, game companies relied on generic research companies such as PwC, GfK, Forrester or IDG to provide global revenue estimates and projections into the future. Gathering relevant global data can cost a lot of time and hardly ever provides the exact insights desired. I think most companies will realize that this has been an enormous effort and are happy that we have taken the initiative. I also expect the screen-based model to be used even more often than it already is.
What type of global data do you provide to your clients?
I believe there are two main reasons why clients, ranging from Valve and Microsoft to GameHouse as well as other companies inside and outside our industry have increasingly been approaching us for global data:
Current global data is insufficient. Projections based purely on money and yearly change do not help to understand growth or, in other words, spot opportunities early enough. Because we also track online connectivity of the population, economic growth, players, time, paying players as well as average spent, we show more than the ultimate end result: money. Growth starts with more people playing. Insights into multiple growth KPIs as we call them becomes increasingly important as games change to a service that in most cases are free to play. There is one other aspect: the way traditional research companies segment their data does not fit the need for well-sliced global data required to drive decisions. That is also the reason why we slice all our data in multiple ways of which the segmentation per typical screen a consumer uses probably provides the best insight into potential growth.
Specialized expertise and data required for the complex modeling. To provide this is not easy. By including so many variables and research results, the model becomes pretty complex. That is why we have taken 12 months to develop this to a level that we feel confident that we have something unique as well as accurate. It also requires a specialist focused on the games market with access to different types of data to do this. When we realized this, we believed we were in the best position to fill this need. Our key clients who almost all are global headquarters subscribe to our data and custom analysis services. There are not many research companies out there with so much hand-on experience with assisting leading game companies with making decisions on a daily business. This experience is also fed back into the global model and report.
