Games sales will be $68.3 billion in 2012

"Phenomenal" growth predicted

18 June 2008 11:53 GMT / By Katie Scott

Console makers and games developers should be rubbing their hands in glee because record sales are apparently on the cards worldwide.

The "Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2008-2012" report from PricewaterhouseCoopers is predicting the video game industry could be worth $68.3 billion in 2012.

This is compared to $41.9 billion in global sales last year, says Reuters, and is a compound annual growth rate of 10.3%.

This, adds the news agency, is "better than all other media sectors except for online advertising and access".

The largest category is console games, which will grow by 6.9% annually, from $24.9 billion last year to $34.7 billion in 2012.

This is despote the fact that this year as seen the launch of the GTA IV, which is largely mooted to be one of the best selling games of all time.

The fastest growing sectors will be online gaming at 16.9% growth, and wireless games at 19%.

And the emerging video game advertising sector is also predicted to explode going from $1 billion in 2007 to $2.3 billion in 2012.

However, it's not all good news as the PC games sector is expected to suffer a 1.2% fall from 2007's $3.8 billion to $3.6 billion in 2012.