The online gaming market in South Korea will exceed US$1.7bn by 2009, driven by new releases and a fervent gaming culture, a new study has revealed.
Pearl Research’s Games Market in Korea paper highlighted the country’s sophisticated information technology infrastructure and the fact that 80 per cent of South Korean households are connected to the internet.
The study revealed that 67 per cent of those in South Korea between the ages of 20-30 paid for online content, with 91 per cent buying music and the 39 per cent purchasing community and avatar items for online services.
This has been spurred on by the success of large game portals in the region that provide access to a wide selection of games. The top portals can attract up to one million unique visitors every day and more than 10 million Korean adults visit such sites every month.
The report also draws attention to the many challenges the games industry faces in the region, such as intense domestic competition, the prevalence of derivative titles, rising development costs and challenges in expanding overseas.
