BBC:The US virtual economy is set to make billions

NotAdmin · Jan 4, 2010

Virtual goods such as weapons or digital bottles of champagne traded in the US could be worth up to $5bn in the next five years, experts predict.
In Asia, sales are already around the $5bn mark and rapidly growing.
For many, virtual goods are one of the hottest trends in technology and are fuelling huge growth in the social gaming sector.
"This is just an exploding part of the gaming business right now, said venture capitalist Jeremy Liew.

"It is the most exciting area in gaming," he said.

Mr Liew, whose firm Lightspeed Venture Partners has invested $10m in virtual goods companies, said the rapid growth of the sector was unprecedented.

"We have seen companies go from nothing in the last 18-24 months to tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue."

...

"Increasingly as people's relationships migrate online, your interactions occur there," said Lightspeed's Mr Liew.

"That makes it more natural for those acknowledgements of how important someone is to us to occur there also. Buying something like virtual champagne or a birthday card is telling someone they are important to you."

However most of the momentum in this virtual goods market happens through social games which Mr Liew said is responsible for bringing a new type of new gamer to the fore.

"We have found tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people playing these social games and many would never consider themselves as gamers. Yet they spend real money to play these games and in some cases really meaningful amounts of money.
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Full article here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8425623.stm

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