China is likely to surpass the U.S. to become world's largest online game market this year, according to a recent report by market research firm iResearch.
China's online game market generated revenue of 20.8 billion yuan ($3.04 billion) in 2008, up 52.2% over the previous year. Over 80% of the revenue came from big, multiplayer online games, with the rest generated from Web games and mobile games.
The overall market is expected to keep growing at an average annual rate of 20% in the coming five years. And iResearch forecasts that the Chinese online market will be worth more than 68 billion yuan by 2012, which will account for almost half of the global market by then. At present, U.S., China and Korea are the world's top three largest online game markets, making up about 29%, 27% and 21% respectively of the global online game market, according to the report.
