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PC games market in 2011 grew to $18.6 billion in US

Free-to-play continues to drive growth worldwide, but especially in Asia

The PC Gaming Alliance (PCGA) unveiled its third annual "Horizons" research report today. Prepared by DFC Intelligence, the report states that the US PC gaming market grew 15 percent to $18.6 billion in 2011, with China seeing 27 percent growth to $6 billion. It is expected that the U.S. market will grow 37 percent by 2015 to $25.5 billion.

No small part of this increase is the rise of free-to-play games. While the $10 billion PC gaming market in Asia is almost entirely driven by F2P titles, companies like Zynga, SOE and Bigpoint are continually popularizing various sorts of F2P games in North America and Europe.

"The PC Gaming juggernaut continues unabated, across the industry and geographic boundaries. While reports of gaming sales at retail show signs of struggle, the impact hasn't been as great for PC Gaming which had an earlier adoption of newer formats, business-models & delivery with: digital distribution, free to play, and subscriptions fueling PC Gaming's strong global growth," said Matt Ployhar, PCGA president and Intel analyst. "Not only investment dollars, but real revenue and profits, are now being generated solely from purely digital business models, formats, and delivery."

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David Radd

Writer - GamesIndustry International/[a]list

David Radd has worked as a gaming journalist since 2004 at sites such as GamerFeed, Gigex and GameDaily Biz. He was previously senior editor at IndustryGamers.

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