UK Trade and Investment has released a report titled "Playing For Keeps - Challenges to Sustaining a World-Class UK Games Sector," which takes a comprehensive look at the games market in the UK contrasted with other global regions, and it has made the full report text available online.
Games Investor Consulting prepared the two-part report for UK Trade and Investment, the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, and Tiga, and the first part of the report looks at the UK's role in the global software market, featuring the competitive profiles of the major development regions, which also includes the U.S., Australia, Canada, Singapore, South Korea and France.
While
the report's first portion finds that there are many strengths particular to the UK market, it cautions "we have no room to be complacent: for example, in 2006 for the first time the UK moved
from being the world's third to its fourth largest producer of games based on revenue, and some territories are showing growth rates that out-pace our own."
The
second part of the report focuses specifically on the intellectual property creation market in those regions, including how those regions compare to the UK.
States the report, "The creation and ownership of original games IP has proven to be of vital importance to the growth of the UK games industry. In addition to the potential for exceptional profitability that it has delivered, successful games IP has historically increased the industry’s contribution to the economy, triggered the start-up of new UK companies, increased investment in innovation and attracted inward investment to the UK from global companies."
Both reports also include the results of an industry survey, which collected responses from companies like Blitz, Codemasters, Eidos, Electronic Arts and Eurocom, among others, about strategies for intellectual property, working with independent developers. business models and innovation in the region.
