Phone Detective

If you think you spend a lot of video games, you 're obviously not alone. The market research firm Gartner has predicted this week that the sale of games and software hit $ 74 billion this year, up 10.4% from the 2010 value of $ 67,000,000,000th In the software segment, the company expects mobile gaming to be increasingly important, driven by the rising popularity of smartphones, and tablets, its share of the sector from 15% to 20% in 2010 will grow in 2015. Here 'sa chart I threw together on Google Speadsheets:

Online gaming is expected to grow at the expense of retail sales experience, like the exploding popularity of digital distribution and free-to-play browser games. Interestingly, Gartner expects the revenues from titles such as World of Warcraft subscription-based and micro-transactions and other Freemium elements are gaining strength, thanks in part to the popularity of the freemium-based social games such as Farmville.

"They have become multi-channel-based provider of choice and continue to expect quality content and experiences provide opportunities by extending their game on multiple platforms," said Brian Blau, research director at Gartner. "If today 's mobile technology does not develop quickly enough to sink the gaming industry is set to the rate of innovation difficult to see. Alternatively, there are opportunities in technology and content genres, \ we can deliver' t see today. "

So we can probably expect an era of cross-platform entertainment, in which games are on consoles, PC, Smartphone and Tablet, with a lot of cohesion between them. We can also expect a lot more high-profile buyouts than traditional gaming giants like EA and Activision are trying to gain more influence in the emerging social and smartphone market.

Meanwhile, a report compiled by games market research firm Newzoo suggests that the majority of UK nationals are now active gamers. 31 million of us now pay for games in Britain, and we're likely to spend ?3.6bn on them this year (slightly less than the ?3.7bn we spent last year.) UK gamers apparently play on games for a total of 43,000,000 hours a day with 21% of that time spent on consoles and 18% on social games; again, it seems social and online gaming are catching up with the traditional console sector.

You can study the information graphics here.