Slideshare presentation: Q4 2012 Universe chart
And following on from our last post, here’s the Slideshare presentation for the Q4 2012 Universe chart. The hi-res version can be ordered here.
And following on from our last post, here’s the Slideshare presentation for the Q4 2012 Universe chart. The hi-res version can be ordered here.
Yesterday we released the Q4 2011 Universe chart along with updated market numbers. Extracted from this analysis, here are the top 15 virtual worlds for under 25’s by total cumulative registered accounts.
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The release of our Q4 2011 data headlined with total cumulative registered accounts reaching 1.7bn (read that post here). Here, we’re showing a segment from the Universe chart for virtual worlds with an average user age between 10 and 15. This age segment is the largest in the sector, closing with 787m registered accounts as at Q4 2011. Here’s the segment.
Stardoll and Club Penguin are the leaders in this age segment both with 150m registered accounts. Following up behind these two are Moshi Monsters and Neopets with circa 70m each.
Looking at virtual worlds with a heavy focus on user generated content, Roblox and Minecraft reside within this age segment with 3m and 18m users respectively. Expect these worlds to post significant increases in users during 2012. Of course, we’ll be following their progress.
Our has the full set of Universe charts and you can order the full KZero Universe chart presentation with high-res imagery can be here.
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Strong growth in the virtual worlds sector throughout 2011 saw total cumulative registered accounts reach 1,772m at the end of Q4 2011. This growth was driven by booming user bases from worlds such as Poptropica, Habbo, Moshi Monsters, Stardoll and Club Penguin.
Encouragingly, whilst the top-tier larger worlds (with over 50m registered users) continue to attract users and leverage their brands, mid-tier worlds (10m to 50m registered users) such as Bin Weevils, Wizard 101, Minecraft, Meez and Fantage also posted positive increases.
The table below shows quarterly numbers by major age range.
From Q3 to Q4 2011, total cumulative registered accounts grew by 282m (an 18.9% quarter on quarter increase), compared to a 141m increase in users from Q2 to Q3 (a 10.4% increase).
The 10 to 15 year old segment continues to set the pace in the space, closing with 787m total cumulative registered accounts in Q4 2011, with the 15 to 25 year old (average user age) element coming in second highest with 596m total accounts.
The chart below shows total cumulative registered accounts by major age range.
We’ll be posting the Universe chart segments on here very shortly, but in the meantime you can get a sneak peak over on our .
The full KZero Universe chart presentation with high-res imagery can be ordered here.
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We’ve just released our latest report called ‘Toys, Media and Virtual Worlds – Creating the Golden Triangle’.
The report, in presentation format, aims to provide professionals in the toys, games, TV and movie sectors with guidance and insight into the key opportunities and strategies available in the virtual worlds sector.
Importantly, it also recommends how to align all three elements into a cohesive community building and revenue generating platform.
Areas covered include branded virtual goods inclusion, community and awareness building, research and development, character development and many others.
Also included in the report are examples of projects deployed to date. The free report can be requested here.
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Looks like we’ve got some competition.
And there’s more insight into Minecraft here.
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A year ago we looked at the popuarlity of Facebook fan-pages for a number of popular virtual worlds, including those with users under 13. The results, i.e. the number of respective fans for each virtual world were not surprising, with the larger worlds enjoying a higher number of fans than the smaller ones.
The chart below shows the same analysis one year on. Across the board – increases. But of course that’s to be expected as these virtual worlds (and most others, regardless of target market) use Facebook for a variety of reasons. And, of course Facebook itself is grown.
Some worlds actually use Facebook to communicate directly to parents of their users, whilst others promote events and competitions. Another growth area is using Facebook during beta trials to both recruit new users and . Probably the area with the biggest potential is . More about that in a future post.
So what do we see here?
maintains pole position with a huge number of fans (in reality they actually even more fans then we’re showing in the chart but we’ve taken the fan-page with the highest following).
They’ll be breaking through 1m fans and on the tails of pretty soon. We’ve taken IMVU out of this analysis because this focus is on KT&T.
has grown massively during the last year with 500k fans now with Hello Kitty Online (note – a young brand) coming in with over 300k fans.
Another future post and supporting report will look right across the spectrum of all virtual worlds using Facebook as an acqusition and retention tool.
Moving on, some of you may look at the chart above and comment that Facebook itself has grown significantly over the same 12 month period so seeing increases in the fan-pages of virtual worlds (and any other group on Facebook) shouldn’t be a surprise. We asked ourselves the same question and did some further analysis. Continue reading →
This is the final post in our series looking at age profiles of popular virtual worlds. Here’s the full presentation:
Shown below is the summary chart containing all worlds in the analysis.
Post one looked at Bin Weevils and Moshi Monsters, post two featured Chimpoo, Stardoll and Poptropica and this chart now pulls in age profiles from Habbo and SmallWorlds.
For SmallWorlds the chart shows a fifth of the user base aged 13 then a flattening out at the 7% – 9% level from 15 t0 18.
Interestingly, Habbo shows nearly an exact opposite trend.
In the last post the topic of play profiles and visual appearance was highlighted as a key factor that determined the ages of users attracted to worlds. Shown below are the avatars of the worlds featured.
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This is the second post in this series looking at age profiles of popular virtual worlds (the full report is the next post). This post looks at two of the largest worlds, Poptropica and Stardoll, along with an ‘up and comer’ in the form of Chimpoo.
Stardoll has over 116m registered accounts with a user base pretty well distributed between North America and Europe. Poptropica has over 170m registered accounts and is strongest in the US. Chimpoo has 4m registered accounts with a user base largely from India. Here are the age profiles for these three worlds.
This chart highlights the impact that different play patterns and user experiences have on the ages of users inside virtual worlds.
For example, Stardoll is primarily dress-up, with users (predominantly females) customising their avatars with clothing. This is an evergreen play pattern, appealing to tweens just as much as teens.
As this post from 2008 shows, Stardoll even resonates with the Mothers of users, with over 60% playing Stardoll alongside their children and of this group, another 60% visit Stardoll without their children. Continue reading →
With the largest quarterly increase since we started tracking in 2008, the virtual worlds sector now has 1.4 billion cumulative registered accounts. That’s an increase from Q1 2011 of 214 million. Not bad.
Growth has come from several sources in Q2 2011. The big boys of the sector continued to grow strongly, with excellent numbers from Moshi Monsters (up 16m to 50m), Poptropica (up 26m to 170m), Habbo (up 20m to 220), IMVU (up 5m to 55m), Minecraft (up 5m to 10m) and Stardoll (up 22m to 116m). Encouraging growth all round and also interesting that these worlds span a variety of different play and socialisation types, such as dress-up, nurturing/pets, casual gaming, chat and UGC.
The table below shows the quarterly numbers by age range.
The five to ten year old segment grew 17.6% from Q1 to Q2 assisted primarily by increases from Poptropica and Panfu. The next age segment, 10 t0 15 year olds grew by 16.2%, with Moshi Monsters and Stardoll leading the charge. Next up, the 15 to 25 year olds increased the most with a quarter-on-quarter uplift of 23%. A modest increase was seen in the 25 and older segment – this is a growth area with several companies looking to tap into this underserved market over the coming months,
Here’s the Universe segment for the 10 to 15 year olds.
The full high-res versions of the Universe charts can be ordered here. We’ll be releasing lower res versions via our shortly and via Slideshare.
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