In an interview with Gamesindustry.biz, Jason Holtman, Valve’s Director of Business Development said the digital distribution platform now has:

• 20 Million Users
• 950 Games
• 2 Million Concurrent Users at its peak
• Steam is in 21 languages

Now in its 7^th year, the Mobile Games Forum is firmly established as the leading Mobile Games event in Europe. With the whole ecosystem present – operators, publishers, developers, handset manufacturers and software providers – all industry viewpoints will be represented at MGF 2010 at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park in London on 19^th and 20^th January 2010. This is your perfect opportunity to question and meet industry experts from:

• Orange
• Vodafone
• 3
• Sony Ericsson
• Nokia
• EA Mobile
• Chillingo
• Glu Mobile
• AdMob
• Walt Disney Internet Group,
• Ariadne Capital
• PAN Vision
• Flirtomatic
• Scoreloop
• GetJar
• Digital Legends Entertainment
• Mplayit
• Fishlabs
• TinRaven
• Mountain Sheep
• Namco Bandai Networks Europe
• Finblade
• DFJ Esprit
• Digital Chocolate
• Doughty Hanson
• Xendex
• Ideaworks 3D
• HandyGames
• Fox Mobile Distribution
• Handmark
• Dojo Media
• Real Networks plus many more.

The unbeatable speaker line-up includes over 45 cutting-edge viewpoints from industry leaders. Independent developers are eligible for a special rate and International Digital Entertainment Agency contacts receive a 15% discount when registering using code C0004IDEA. For full details please visit www.mobilegamesforum.co.uk or contact andrew_mowbray@osneymedia.com.

MCV reported that the Nintendo DS now has an install base of 113.48 Million units worldwide. This is an increase of 13% since March 6th, 2009. The DS has been selling at a rate of two to one for every Wii sold over the past six months.

MAR11

According to MCV, Nintendo has:

9 Million “primary” female gamers that regularly play the Wii

DFC Intelligence, recently released more details from their October 20th report on 8,000 consumers:

• 54% of respondents in North America had played a game on their mobile phone in the past year
• 69% of respondents in Europe had played a game on their mobile phone in the past year
• 45% of respondents in North America had paid to purchase an application for their mobile phone
• 36% of respondents in Europe had paid to purchase an application for their mobile phone
• Apple’s App Store is the most popular service for purchases
• 15% of respondents owned an iPhone or iPod touch (Europe and U.S.)
• 29% of respondents owned a Nintendo DS (Europe and U.S.)

According to Jon Peddie Research, PC Gaming Hardware is forecast to reach $27 Billion in 2010.

• The worldwide PC gaming hardware market will gain $1.2 billion in2009,  a 5.9% increase versus 2008 (from $20.07 to $21.26 billion)
• The worldwide PC gaming hardware market is expected to grow by 30% in 2010

A recent study by In-Stat, predicts mass adoption of Ultra HD TVs will stretch into the 2020s. Ultra HD comes in: 4K (3840×2160) 4x 1080p resolution; and 8K (7680×4320) 16x 1080p resolution. In-Stat also predicted:

• 40% of North American homes will have Ultra HD sets by 2025
• 28.2% of European homes will have Ultra HD sets by 2025
• 20 million Ultra HD sets will be shipped in North America by 2025
• It will take 5-10 years before displays reach 5% of all homes
• Broadcasters won’t begin offering Ultra HD content until 2017
• A number of consumer-electronics manufacturers are already exploring the higher formats, and theatrical film makers are already producing 4K content for digital cinemas.
• Digital cinemas are already exhibiting 4K content and creating infrastructure for 4K and 8K content
• 1080p and 3D content will become more widely distributed before Ultra HD arrives in the home

For game makers, this should give an idea of how much the art requirements are going to change on games such as Modern Warfare 6 and Grand Theft Auto 11 (ok that was a joke).

According to eMarketer, there will be 126.2 Million Mobile Internet Users by 2013. This presents great opportunities for social gaming companies and mobile entertainment companies as it becomes easier to have cross-platform access to entertainment. It also means there will need to be a greater push for mobile browser sized web pages and applications.

eMarketer’s article also cites Yankee Group’s projection that:

• Smartphone application revenues will reach $4.2 billion in 2013
• Smartphone application revenues are estimated at $343 million in 2009

There are currently only 800 applications available for Windows Mobile, compared with more that 100,000 for iPhone. Microsoft is making the Windows Marketplace for Mobile available to 6.0 and 6.1 users (the current version is 6.5). The store launched on Windows Mobile 6.5 a month ago, and will now be available to 30 million devices worldwide.

According to NPD, October saw the following hardware sales in the U.S.:

Wii – 507,000 units

PlayStation 3 (PS3) – 321,00 units

Xbox 360 – 250,000 units

We would expect all of these numbers to rise for the holidays. While Wii is selling pretty well, the deep discounting retailers are putting on bundles, including $300 configurations for PS3 and 360 will push those platforms for the holidays. Also, given the fact that the $300 price point was where the PS2  really took off as a DVD player that also played games a decade ago, the Blu-ray capabilities of the PS3 are now priced at a mainstream consumer price where we should see adoption increase. It’s not a cheap Blu-ray system and will likely benefit from Blu-ray movie discounting this holiday season, as well as inexpensive HDTVs.