Sounds optimistic?
South Korea’s Cyworld has 20 million, World of Warcraft 8 million subscribers, and Habbo Hotel has 7 million. That’s 35 million for three products.
The research comes from tech research group Gartner’s.
Gartner’s describes a these virtual worlds and still mainly PC based, but also accessible by PDA’s and phones etc…
Shame, because there’s another 3-6 million people of Xbox Live to add in. There’s around 3 mill already, and Microsoft aims to top six million by the end of June. So our total is already up to 41 million, ignoring cross overs. Add in Everquest, Lineage, and a few of the others, and I’d say 50 million is probably a target for the end of 2008, rather than 2011.
How about 100 million by 2011? I’d be pretty safe to say China and South Korea will be the largest populations. And, speaking from experience, I’d rather move house virtually than in real life…
More on this at Giga-Om.