The video game industry by the numbers (video)

Video game stats are always a lot of fun. Gamers love to keep track of them, from their achievements in multiplayer games to figures that show gaming is becoming one of the most important forms of entertainment.

AggreGame put together the video below to focus on stats that show just how big video games got in 2010. There are a lot more interesting numbers that aren’t included in this video. A sampling? Well, video game startups raised $1.05 billion in 2010, up 58 percent from a year before. And if you count both game fundings and acquisitions, the value of video game deals in 2010 was $1.89 billion, up 130 percent from 2009.

Another cool figure relates to virtual goods, which are digital items that you can buy in online free-to-play games. In 2011, the U.S. virtual goods market is expected to hit $2.1 billion, up from $1.6 billion in 2010, according to Inside Network. Another telling figure: online and mobile games will grow from a third of industry revenues to half of industry revenue, or $44 billion, by 2014, according to Digi-Capital.

We’ll be exploring a lot of the numbers related to video games at our third annual GamesBeat 2011 video game conference. Our theme, Mobile Games Level Up, will focus on the disruptive trends in the mobile game market. The event takes place July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco and it is co-located with our MobileBeat 2011 conference this year. To register, click on this link. Sponsors can message us at sponsors@venturebeat.com.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jrye5CTzZbw&w=640&h=390]

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.