This Just In, We're All Doomed

A new market forecast from a global research firm puts the global MMO market at $8 billion this year, thanks largely to growth in China and Korea. Gamasutra, which unlike me could apparently afford the $2000 to read it, notes:

the MMORPG industry can be essentially considered as two regions, with Blizzard Entertainment dominating the "slowly growing" Western market, and publishers such as Shanda, Netease, Nexon, and NCsoft driving most of the MMORPG market's growth in Asia.

Strategy Analytics believes MMORPGs in the Western market are showing signs of a slowdown due to competition with console video games and the rising popularity of social games. It also says that the traditional subscription model in many Western MMORPGs has "lost traction and growth momentum."

It goes on to assert that future growth in the Western market will be spurred on by Asian companies entering the US market, because, you know, that never happened before.