Pearl Research, a San Fransisco based consultation and intelligence firm, have released an interesting article on the future for the Chinese gaming market. They expect that on the current trend, the games market should pass in excess of $760 Million by the end of 2006. The firm also state how the market will continue to grow to an expected $1 Billion mark by 2009. This will be aided by the increase in the economy and spending power on games.

China has a booming economic market which is making many of the middle class affluent, which therefore means they have more disposable income. More and more of this income is being spent on either internet or games, but increasingly so, on both. Pearl Research state that of the $760 Million or so, up to 95% of the growth will be down to the boom shown in online gaming. As things stand, 3% of the total population play games, that's 25 Million people, whereas 9% (111 Million) are involved with the internet. For this reason analysts show that the high number of broadband internet users is fueling the demand for online gaming.

This survey hasn't shown anything unexpected, as it is well known that many companies aim and target their online gaming at China. Nintendo for example brand themselves under the iQue brand, and many think that they are branding the Revolution towards them too, by offering cheap downloadable games, their plan might succeed.