The Change Mariner

Online Games Surpass $1 Billion

San Jose Mercury News:

Online gaming on video game consoles gathered momentum in 2003, with U.S. retail sales of online games exceeding $1 billion.

Market researcher NPD Group in Port Washington, N.Y., said sales of games with online features rose 167 percent from 2002. Unit sales of such games in 2003 were 23 million, up 182 percent from the previous year.

NPD said that since online game consoles hit the market in 2000 with the launch of the Microsoft Xbox and later the PlayStation 2 network adapter, 33 million online-capable games have been sold.

The numbers are misleading in one sense. Many gamers buy online-capable games such as ``Madden NFL 2004'' but often they don't bother to play them online. Rather, they just play them as normal console games. NPD said the most popular genres are sports games and shooting games.

In 2002, sport games were 69 percent of the online-capable video games market, while shooting games were 22 percent. In 2003, sports games were 51 percent, shooting games were 22 percent, racing games were 15 percent and role-playing games 4 percent.