Online Demographics

Virtual Worlds: 1 billion members by 2017

MMO news website - Massively.com - offers comment on a recent research report from Strategy Analytics which predicts that one billion people will be involved with virtual worlds by 2017. This suggests that approximately 22% of all global broadband users will “participate in one or more virtual worlds on some level.”

The research is based on non-gaming virtual worlds and - as Massively point out in a related comment - were they to include the massively multiplayer online market the overall global figure would be higher.

An instructive overview of the current virtual world environment can be found via the KZero’s Universe Graph.

© 2008 Online Futures Group.