As tens of thousands of visitors descended upon the the Electronic
Game Show in Mexico City, the buzz was about more than the latest
game titles. The Mexican video game industry is exploding,
attracting major new marketing investment and luring global
game publishers to establish local offices. In fact, according to a new
report from Americas News Intelligence, the industry could be worth $1
billion by the end of the decade.
"The results of our research flies in the face of the image of Mexico as
an insignificant consumer market plagued with piracy," says Phung Pham,
lead analyst on the report. "There is a booming gamer population and
despite problems with piracy, a substantial level of legitimate
business. And video game publishers are finally starting to take note."
One particularly interesting phenomenon identified in report is the
emergence of young, unmarried gamers, or YUGS, as the authors call them.
It is common in Mexico, they note, for young adults to live with their
parents until their first marriage - translating into a high level of
disposable income. In 1995, women married at the age of 20, and men at
23, on average. But just one decade later, women are now married at the
age of 25 and men at 28 - resulting in up to a decade of cash-flush
YUGGIES of prime gaming age.
The full report includes consumer and demographic background, first- and
third-party analysis, industry trends, forecasts, and detailed data on
hardware and software unit sales, revenue, and market share. It is
available at
http://www.latinintel.com/
The 40-page market research report on the Mexican video game industry
is the first of its kind. The data included in this report come from many
sources, starting with extensive interviews with first-party stakeholders
and third-party software publishers; distributors;
at the Economy Ministry, Mexican Customs, the National Institute of Statistics
and Geographic Information, and the Bancomext import-export development
bank; customs brokers; intellectual property representatives at the Business
Software Association and Entertainment Software Association;
magazine publishers, journalists, and producers; researchers at the
Iberoamericana University; sources at the US Commercial Service;
video game sales representatives;
informal vendors of legitimate and illegitimate video game products
offering their wares in both street markets and online.
