GameRates.com Launches to Track $2 billion Virtual Currency Exchange

Jan. 1, 2009 - PRLog -- GameRates.com officially launches its virtual currency analysis site responsible for tracking the exchange market between virtual and real life currency. Founder Andrew Smith stated, “The idea is to create The Wall Street Journal for the virtual game economy. The blogs headline are ripped straight from these virtual game economies such as, ‘Chinese gold farmer strike causes the USD/Gold exchange rate to skyrocket 15%. Can you picture it?”

GameRates provides consumer reports reviews of the various currency vendors in the industry matched with a powerful price comparison service - Currently tracking over 50,000 unique pages a day and rapidly growing.

Julian Dibbel of the New York Times estimated the annual worldwide virtual currency market to be at 1.8 billion dollars.

Strategy Analytics, a research and consulting firm, predicted that the Internet gaming market will reach $11.5 billion by 2011. Furthermore, it predicted that "non-subscription revenue" from the virtual currency exchange market would reach $5 billion by the same year.

Andrew Smith commented, “The problem is, you have this rapidly growing billion dollar market with absolutely no accountability. We saw this void and created GameRates. It allows the consumers to regulate the market themselves. With equal access to quality information, consumers can reward trustworthy vendors and punish dishonest ones.”

GameRates.com is the first site to provide instant analysis combined with robust live charts to track the every move of the virtual currency industry. It currently supports eleven different MMO’s: World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XI, EverQuest, EverQuest 2, Second Life, Guild Wars, Eve Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Lineage II, and the newly released Age of Conan. Along with its up-to the-minute analysis of virtual economies, it also provides extensive price matching features.

GameRates is privately funded from the proceeds of the two founders’ previous internet startup.

Contact Information
Andrew Smith
http://www.gamerates.com
Gamerates@gmail.com