Lack of digital chart is "turning off investors"

Potential video game investors are being put off by the lack of digital data, say industry experts.

The UK games industry’s Digital Group – which is supported by UKIE – says it’ll be easier to persuade financial giants to invest in games if they could see the size of the market.

There is a ton of investors who want to invest in the games industry,” said Mediatonic’s Geoff Heath.I know quite a lot of them and what’s holding a lot of them back is getting good data on the non-boxed business.

Green Man Gaming’s Paul Sulyok added: We get professional investors contacting us, they are saying they would like some information about the market because they are doing x, y and z.

But there isn’t that clarity around the value of this digital marketplace – and there is clarity around boxed products as it is established now.”

Get Games operations director Dermot Stapleton added: There’s lots of headline figures about the industry being worth x number of billion pounds, but is the industry sustainable? Is there a living to be made out of it? Is it worth getting out of bed?”

The UK’s Digital Group currently consists of 24 members who are trying to form a PC digital download chart – which it says will be available in months.

This chart is letting us measure this for the first time, and you can truly see that the PC market is not dying at all,” said Square Enix’s online publishing director Simon Protheroe.

UKIE?chairman Andy Payne added: We haven’t dragged anyone to this group. There is good stuff here, so why not come on in? This is not a UKIE club thing. It is for the entire industry.”