We wrote recently that in the United States 46 Million MMORPG players spent over $3.8 billion in 2009. a big part of this is of course monthly subscription costs which the US is partial to. But in China it is a different story. Free-to-play massively multiplayer online role playing games dominate and virtual products are the main source of spending in profit. In fact China spent an estimated $5 billion in virtual products in 2009 compared to $1 billion in the United States.
Many popular games have crossed over and adapted this business model such as Runes of Magic. Indeed this appears to be the future of MMORPGs in the US. The use of virtual currency and the purchase of virtual goods has been increasingly popular.
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Mar 18, 2010 at 07:19:52
This statistic is meaningless in a vacuum like this.
How much of this figure is, in fact, Asians farming and selling traditional MMORPG gold to westerners?