Video game industry

The video game industry (sometimes referred to as the interactive entertainment industry) is the economic sector involved with the development, marketing and sales of video games. It encompasses dozens of job disciplines and employs thousands of people worldwide.

Considered by most as a curiosity in the mid-1970s, the computer and video game industry has grown from focused markets to mainstream. They took in about US$9.5 billion in the US in 2007, 11.7 billion in 2008, and 25.1 billion in 2010 (ESA annual report).

Modern personal computers owe many advancements and innovations to the game industry: sound cards, graphics cards and 3D graphic accelerators, faster CPUs, and dedicated co-processors like PhysX are a few of the more notable improvements.

Sound cards were developed for addition of digital-quality sound to games and only later improved for music and audiophiles. Early on, graphics cards were developed for more colors. Later, graphics cards were developed for graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and games; GUIs drove the need for high resolution, and games began using 3D acceleration. They also are one of the only pieces of hardware to allow multiple hookups (such as with SLI or CrossFire graphics cards). CD- and DVD-ROMs were developed for mass distribution of media in general; however the ability to store more information on cheap easily distributable media was instrumental in driving their ever-higher speeds.

Ben Sawyer of Digitalmill observes that the game industry value chain is made up of six connected and distinctive layers:

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