14 DAY TRIAL // An investment bank has added up the value of all video game related companies that are publicly owned and found that they are worth somewhere between 100 and 105 billion dollars, with Nintendo being the company which leads all other in the industry.
The report comes from Paul Heydon, who made a presentation for investment bank Avista Partners at the Edinburgh Interactive event that took place earlier in the week.
Market capitalization is a measure of how much a company is worth based on the amount that it's shares are worth and is favored by investors who are looking to buy into a business.
The measurement has been criticized for being based only on share value, which can fluctuate wildly and are influenced by factors that are outside the control of the companies that are evaluated.
The report has taken into account companies that are active in the console market, the PC market, the portable gaming area, online games, accessories and even micro transactions.
Nintendo is most valuable public gaming company, evaluated at about 34.9 billion dollars.
In the last few years the Japanese video game publisher and hardware maker profited from the popularity of the Wii home console and the DS family of handhelds and managed to create successful franchises based on characters like Mario and Link.
The investment bank also says that the companies that are focused on PC and consoles business are worth about 33.2 billion dollars when Nintendo is taken out of the picture.
Social titles are lumped together with MMOs and are valued at 23.4 billions while mobile gaming, despite its recent growth, has only reached 8.26 billion dollars.
Payment services have also gone over 1.37 billion in value, with distribution evaluated to by at about 311 million.
2009 and 2010 have not been the best years for video games, with sales of both console and titles coming down because of the economic crisis.