While the games industry focuses intently on North America, Europe and Japan, are game companies missing opportunities in South America? Here are Next-Gen's ten facts worth knowing...

The Western world has been notorious for overlooking South America as a cultural or economic center for a long time, and the game industry has been no exception. Today, Brazil is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, Chile has been considered a reliable financial hub for decades, and Argentina is enjoying an economic renaissance brought on by a combination of cultural familiarity and a devalued currency. Investors, policy makers, businesses and marketers have been turning to Latin America for its robust growth, and it's time for the game industry to follow suit with greater temerity. The following is an introduction to a unique part of the world that poses tremendous opportunities, both for game development and for audience expansion.

1. South Americans Like Games

South Americans love games just as much as anyone else. A continent of 370 million people, about 150 million of which are above the poverty line, the South American game market has a unique character. For example, 80% of people 25 and younger in Argentina play games, according to the Centre for Media Studies in Buenos Aires, and 95% of young males visit Internet outlets almost daily for the purpose of playing games. While lacking the volume of the Asian market or the high-end purchase patterns of the North American and European markets, there is a significant cache of human interest, yet largely untapped.

2. Only The Top Of The Market Can Afford Consoles Currently

If you walk down Corrientes Ave. in Buenos Aires, you will find the city's low-end equivalent to GameStop. The exterior shows a PlayStation 2 priced at 960 pesos, or about $300 USD - only tourists equipped with Sterling could possibly buy the console for a price close to its retail MSRP. Next to that is an original PlayStation, priced at about 400 pesos, and best of all, a Sega Genesis for 150 pesos. The store is selling Sega Genesis systems in 2007, for the equivalent of fifty dollars. Because no first-party publisher has officially launched production and distribution in Argentina, or Uruguay, or Brazil, or Chile, much less nations like Peru or Bolivia, it is prohibitively expensive to purchase a console. This cost is compounded, in Argentina particularly, by the expensive Value-Added-Tax (VAT) levied on electronics imports with intent for sale.

3. Piracy Rates For Console Games Are Over 95%

Imagine you're a teenager or early twenty-something making ten pesos an hour at a grocery store. You live with your parents, like many people here do through their twenties, so your direct living expenses are marginal, and your college education is free, so you've got very little stopping you from saving up for a sweet game system. If you spend none of your income, after taxes, you'll have to have worked full-time for about a month just to afford a PlayStation 2. That’s a lot of labor, and once you've climbed that wall and put down that sunk-cost, how are you going to get your games? You could order them off of Amazon or GameStop's website, no problem, just pay what they cost in dollars, then pay the shipping cost from California to Cordoba, again in dollars, and wait four months for it to arrive. Or you could pay ten pesos, the equivalent of about $3.25, for a disc containing twenty games. For the vast majority of the audience, there is no feasible alternative to piracy.