EA sees Central Europe games market maturing, piracy down

[Farid]

Here's a part of the wire:

WARSAW (Reuters) - Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), the world's biggest video game publisher, expects the central European market to continue developing quickly and piracy to fall, EA's head of European sales said in an interview.

Jens Uwe Intat told Reuters on Friday that consumers in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland who started playing games on PCs are moving to dedicated games consoles -- a sign of market maturity that also makes illegal copying harder.

EA (ERTS.O: Quote, Profile, Research) is the name behind games such as "Need for Speed Most Wanted", "Madden NFL 06" and "The Sims".

"It's a similar trend in all three countries...console software started at around 15 percent of all entertainment software two years ago. In 2005 it will probably be 35 percent and for 2007 we expect it to be around 65-70 percent," he said.

By comparison, Intat added, software for consoles accounts for about 80 percent of sales in the United States and only recently topped the 50 percent mark in Germany.

He said growth in the games market in the three countries which joined the European Union last year was being driven by rising purchasing power and by the relative youth of their populations, particularly in Poland.

"It's the purchasing power, and it's also the society, which is very modern and very curious about new technologies," Intat said, adding that 34 percent of Poland's population is under 24 years old, compared with 26 percent in Germany.

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That kind of news somehow corroborate what some analyst seem to expect from this next-generation. I'm talking about the importance of the EU market.
Some analysts predicted tht the EU will be the first market for the videogame industry (in front of the North American and Japanese markets) in the next years.

 

[Npl]

I still remember visiting Poland in the early 90`s. There were dozends of shops dealing with copied games( mainly Amiga at that time ), even in big, serious looking chains. Same with music-tapes. There were no originals to be seen anywhere, and one wouldnt assume youre doing something illegal buying stuff in regular shops

Im quite surprised about 50% Console-Sales in Germany though. I wouldve guessed central Europe its in favour of Consoles already. 50% of total software sales with Apps included would be reasonable, but I guess the % was from EA sales only

 

[Gollum]

The PC market is still pretty strong in Germany for one reason: we love long drawn out strategy, economy and RPG games, something that is almost extinct on the US market. You simply don't find many of these games on consoles, which cater more to the trigger-happy thrill-seeking crowd. They're gaining momentum, but there's still plenty of hardcore PC gamers left here...

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Yeah, several hungarian PC game developers make a living from creating RTS games with tanks in them And EA is really expanding here, one of my friends works there. They've doubled their sales in a year or so...