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An Introduction to the Video Game Market in Mexico - News

by VGChartz Staff , posted on 09 March 2011 / 31,909 Views

Why Mexico?

Mexico is becoming a very large video game market. With 110 million people, a strong university system, a trillion dollar economy, free trade agreements with countries housing major video game companies, and roughly half of all people under the age of 25, we at VGChartz believe that Mexico is currently the fastest growing retail video game market in the world. 

Gamer's Paradise, a Mexican videogame retailer trying to convince daring entrepreneurial spirits to franchise its business in new locations, noted recently that the Mexican videogame industry was doubling every four years. The Mexican video game industry, the retailer wrote, was recently worth 15 billion Pesos - roughly $1.2 billion US dollars - and if you look at the previous link with your browser tools, the website claiming this was modified to list that figure on January 4, 2011. The figure thus appears to be for 2010. Gamer's Paradise wrote the following on January 4, 2011 as an introduction to why one should franchise its business:

"La industria de los videojuegos actual es el sector más importante de la industria de entretenimiento, con ventas mayores que la industria del cine y música COMBINADAS. Con tasas anuales de crecimiento promedio del 30% la industria facturó solamente en México ventas superiores a los $15 mil millones y cada 4 años duplica su tamaño."

Spanish is not my first language, but with some help from Google, I get the following translation:  "The video game industry is now the most important component of the entertainment industry, with sales greater than movies and music COMBINED. With annual growth rates averaging 30% [in Mexico], the industry generated sales of $15 Billion / $15,000 Million [Mexican Pesos] in Mexico alone, doubling its size in four years [$600m in 2007, $780m in 2008, $1b in 2009, $1.25b in 2010 roughly] ."

Tracking Mexico - What is Selling Well?

We are currently working to track the Mexican industry with its own charts. In the meantime, VGC would like to attempt to provide curious parties with occassional looks at top sellers in the country. Three Mexican video game retailers appear to offer weekly or daily figures for top performances. First, there is Game Rush Mexico owned by Blockbuster Mexico, which has 150 locations in the country according to its website and about 7% marketshare overall according to our research. Next we have Mixup, a music-oriented store with about 70 locations in Mexico. Mixup share is harder to establish, but it is a similar type of store to FYE in the USA, and therefore likely has no more than 1-2% share of video games. Finally, there is Sanbourns, which is a general store with about 200 locations in Mexico and about 2% of the Mexican video game market by our estimates. Overall, we are working on the assumption that these stores represent 8.5% - 11% of the (legal) Mexican video game market.

Unfortunately, data appears to be delayed a week for Sanbourns and Game Rush Mexico and mislabelled at Game Rush (the top ten is listed as March 3-10 on March 8, so its not weekly data for that period). Mixup data appears to run through March 6th, 7th, or 8th, but it may also be daily data. The major clue to this is Pokemon, which sells everywhere, is not amongst the top games anywhere but Mixup. This probably means Sanbourns and Game Rush data runs from February 27 to March 5, as other major Nintendo games have charted highly at those retailers, but Pokemon did not. With Pokemon, the Mixup total below covers at least March 6th, and may simply run a day or a few days after the other stores. In America, Game Stop operates on a different schedule than Walmart, so the timing difference is not that unusual. Regardless of the time covered, which is a mystery we can solve in the coming weeks, the three retailers appear to be strongly in favor of Microsoft and Nintendo.

Prices listed below are converted from Mexican Pesos that are listed by Mexican retailers and converted to USA dollars.

Sanborns Mexico                              Game Rush Mexico                            Mixup

1) NSMB Wii - $83                            Kinect Sports - $58                           Pokemon White - $59

2) Metroid: Other M - $83             Super Mario All Stars - $58            Pokemon Black - $59

3) Halo Reach - $75                         COD: Black Ops (X360) - $83          Kinect Sports - $58

4) Toy Story 3 (X360) - $64             Dance Central - $58                        Killzone 3 / with Move - $166

5) Kinectimals - $58                         Kinect Joy Ride - $58                       Mario Sports Mix - $83

6) Kinect Joy Ride - $58                   Fifa 11 (X360) - $83                         Halo Reach - $75

7) Kinect Sports - $58                       Halo: Reach - $75                           Disney Epic Mickey - $66.5

8)                 n/a                                   Kinectimals - $58                            AC: Brotherhood (X360) - $83

9)                  n/a                                AC: Brotherhood (X360) - $58       Dead Space 2 (X360) - $83

10)                n/a                                COD: Black Ops (PS3) - $83             (Not Listed)

Mexicans appear to pay 30-60% more than their American counterparts for legally purchased (non-pirated) software and hardware just about across the board. Using listed prices, and a typical split for software / hardware / accessories in Mexico, something like 7-11 million video games were sold in the country during 2010, along with 1.3-2.7 million units of hardware.

Kinect appears to be doing quite well in Mexico from this sampling of retailers. Kinect Sports is amongst the top sellers on all three lists. Kinect Joy Ride and Kinectimals appear amongst two of the lists as does Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. Halo: Reach also appears on all three lists. Sony is nearly blocked out from all three top-sellers lists - presumably because the PS3 remains prohibitively expensive in Mexico to buy legally. Even Wii still sells for about $290-$340 in Mexico in many places, while retailers show PS3 generally for $480-$580 with X360 still $320-$420. Part of Microsoft's strength in Mexico appears to be that software is comparable in price to Wii for both core titles (COD and NSMB Wii for $83) and more mass-oriented titles (Kinect games sell at the price points of Wii motion games). Since we have yet to determine if the retailers above are particularly strong or weak for any of the big three, it is too early to say the If the entire Mexican market reflects the trends above. Also, if all portable pricing is like Pokemon in Mexico, virtually at console levels, it is hard to imagine the devices are as successful as they are in other areas of the world.

Look for semi-regular updates on the Mexican video game market going forward on Tuesday or Wednesday, as VGChartz attempts to fully track Mexico as its own market. We still have a long way to go, but there is significant progress going on behind the scenes. As one final note, we would like to thank all of our Mexican users who have greatly contributed to this process in previous weeks.

Contact VGChartz at jmazel@vgchartz.com


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25 Comments
xS7SxSNIPER (on 22 December 2012)

Que chido yo tan bien soy Mexicano, y mi gusta jugar con ellos saludos des de estados unidos.

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perroskov (on 06 April 2011)

IGD = IGD (finger mistake :))

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perroskov (on 06 April 2011)

Check the Latin America Video Game Market Report - October 2010 by IGD ( http://www.idgconsulting.com/products) for more information. The biggest retailer in Mexico is Game Planet, and there are bigger retailers than Sanborns, Game Rush or Mix Up :)

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Kai Master (on 13 March 2011)

Nice ! More countries more fun ^^ Articles on VG markets listed on EMEEA would be nice too, how big are the "other" markets and how fast are they growing ? I'm curious about China, Brazil and Mexico. oh, and units sold are a better indicator than money which is linked to exange rates...

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enrageorange (on 12 March 2011)

brazils prices are still ridiculously high for the legit market to become a significant portion of all video games sales. But i'm sure if prices go down in the next few gens it will be a comparable market if not bigger than japan for consoles. Interesting to see how fast mexico is expanding. It seems safe to predict that video game sales will only continue to increase as manufacturers expand their products to new markets and prices lower.

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TheSource (on 09 March 2011)

Thanks for the comments guys - I'll try to get some Mexican top sellers each week as we continue to work behind the scenes.

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Joel12345 (on 09 March 2011)

Es todo!!!!!
haha I don't live in Mexico.
But I am Mexican,playing with the same race is the shit!

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szerbijn (on 09 March 2011)

jo, bastantes mexicanos, aunque ciertamente casi ninguno juegue ps3 :< (bueno, comparado con 360)

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UnknownFact (on 09 March 2011)

Nice.

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Leunam (on 09 March 2011)

Great job. Looking forward to checking Mexican numbers.

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Soma (on 09 March 2011)

wow great article! Glad to know you are taking it seriously to track the mexican market! Good job!

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justinian (on 09 March 2011)

I would track Brazil as well. Their economy is already in the top ten and growing faster than Mexico's (Brazil is also forecasted for a top four economy spot in a few years) and the industry there will be far bigger. Might as well get in there early.

Just noticed you said the same DonFerrari.

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DonFerrari (on 09 March 2011)

And I would suggest you also track Brazil as we have almost 200 million people living here and a hot vg market, with a lot of imports and pirates true, but in the last Sony BR PR they did release that brazilian market is really strong for them... and for prices here we pay 1200 reais (730 dollars roughly for a legal console... or 520 for a import in flea market)... and new games costs between 200~250 reais (120~150 dollars)... and this is because of importation tax 100% and other costs.

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ablasolo (on 09 March 2011)

Ya era hora! (At last!) Ver un poco de números de nuestra región, conocer que se esta vendiendo más.

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Thorkz (on 09 March 2011)

First of all I have to say that I´m mexican, and that I´m shocked about this article. To help VgChartz to research about mexican sales, I suggest to check the stores "Game Planet", this stores probally sell the same amount of videogames and videogame consoles that GameRush does; it would also be a great idea to check Walmarts and some department stores such as "El Palacio de Hierro" and "Liverpool", this ones would give you a more exact approach to the sales.

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Carlox123 (on 09 March 2011)

Also it would be great if you could do a reserch of why the prices are too high here in Mexico, for example today 1 dollar = $12 pesos, but a game console that in USA is $299 dollars X $12pesos it should cost $3,588.- pesos but is not that way instead a 299 dollar game console in Mexico is something about $6,500 pesos like if instead of a 12 pesos per dollar it woud be $21.73 pesos per dollar, there are a tax here in mexico that is 16% but even with that, the games and consoles are about 40%-50% more expensive, than crossing the border and buying them, lamentably not all of us live near the border to buy them cheaper in USA

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paulatreides25 (on 09 March 2011)

great, is a good start to tracking mexican sales, i support the list of retailers of carlox123 they got the bigger share.

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Carlox123 (on 09 March 2011)

Hi, i am from Mexico, this are the places vgchartz should track: 1.-Liverpool, 2.-fabricas de francia, 3.-gamerush, 4.-gameplanet, 5.-sears, 6.-sanborns, 7.-costco, 8.-sams, 9.-mixup, 10.-walmart, each one of these stores have presence in every city of Mexico and all these ones really sell a lot of games, are the most representative game retailers of the mexican game market in that order. Glad to se you are interested in Mexico track, like you said 110 million population, and the games are very popular here, there are too a lot of piracy here because the high prices, and also because of it may sound interestig to you to know that many of the US sales you track are from mexicans tha import games, many mexicans cross the border to buy their games(and many other products), and all that sells are tracked as US sales instead of Mexico sales, even with piracy there really a lot of legal sells in all these reatilers. The wii an 360 are the most popular in Mexico because 2 reasons; the price and the piracy, but now the ps3 is very popular and now every body wants a ps3, the wii popularity seems to be dying here since one year ago. Also will realize that the Mexican games preferences are different from de US people. Mexicans preferences in games are more like a combination of the europeans, US an japan preferences

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Shura (on 09 March 2011)

Awesome, Im from mexico, everyday i love more vgchartz. Let me tell you, I see xbox 360 everywhre, it have to be millions outt there. And we know than mexico its betwen the 4th or 5th biggest country for MS

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APKenna (on 09 March 2011)

This article is great, Jacob, thank you very much for bringing a litle of my country to this website, it is really eye opening to show how much more expensive the video game industry still in there, as for the prices, you are very accurate...i actually got to Mexico quite a few times a year and went to Coppel, one of the bigest Mexican retailers(i believe is of Canadian origin), and asked the manager there "Why is the PS3 7990.00 pesos", he told me mostrly because is imported and the demand is not great as Mexican Pirates DON't pirate games due to the Bluray format which a single Virgin disc is almost the same price as buying a brand new game, and that is why during Xmas time the border gets crazy cuz you have thousands of Mexicans xssing the border to come shopping here on to the US, but in my opinion it still doesn't justify why e rything regarding video game is so expensive, I vall Mexico "the sleeping giant" for video games, once everything goes down in price to fit Mexicos economy(to afford such luxuries) sales on the gaming Industry will more than double, but keep up the good work.

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ghost_of_fazz (on 09 March 2011)

Good read

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Laurel Aitken (on 09 March 2011)

Well, the 360 is the biggest console here in Mexico, followed by the Wii and PS3 in a third place.

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rockleemexico (on 09 March 2011)

wow i am mexican also, i knew that the market was growing but not so fast, i am glad to read this.

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szerbijn (on 09 March 2011)

I live in Mexico, so I like this :D

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Michael-5 (on 09 March 2011)

If one day you're able to track Mexican video game sales, and give it a separate tab in Weekly/Yearly Americas sales. Could you also give a third tab to Canada? I'm sure you can track Canadian sales more easily then Mexican sales, and with an economy mirrored to the USA, it shouldn't be that hard to track. After all you speak the same language, and we have the same retailers as you.

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