Market Research - Spain Game Market

Spain is after United Kingdom, France and Germany the fourth largest video game market in Europe. 

The Growing Spanish-Speaking Gaming Market 

As a reaction to the news of this growing market, GameSpot and Univision announced that they were teaming up to provide content for a new online destination focusing on video games in Spanish.

GameSpot, a gaming website owned by CBS Interactive, will provide content for this new Spanish gaming website, which will be hosted on Univision.com. Univision is a Spanish-language TV network that reaches more than 95 percent of Spanish-speaking households in the United States.

New research conducted by Univision shows that Hispanic households were more likely than non-Hispanic households to buy a video game in the next 30 days. Not only that, but they were also more likely to purchase in-home video game consoles and say that the price point was not a factor or deterrent in purchasing games or other gaming accessories.

“Our new video games site will be an industry-leading, fully comprehensive US Spanish-language source for video game news, content and information,” said Kevin Conroy, president of Univision Interactive Media, in a recent press release. “This launch is part of Univision’s company-wide commitment to providing US Hispanics with best-in-class Spanish-language video gaming content not currently available to them anywhere else.”

The website will focus on news, reviews, editorials and tips on video games in Spanish as well as top-selling games worldwide. 

Translating and Localizing Video Games in Spanish 

This new information about the Spanish-speaking gaming market highlights exactly why it’s important for game developers to think about translating and localizing video games in Spanish.

While many companies offer translation and localization services, not all are the same. There are many things to consider when working on video games in Spanish.

For example, there are 300 million people around the world whose native language is Spanish. It is widely spoken in 22 countries on four continents, including the US, which has about 30 million native Spanish speakers. However, not all of these 300 million speakers speak the same kind of Spanish.

There are many different dialects in Spanish, which results in differences in grammar, vocabulary and accents. Even verbs are conjugated differently. Common phrases in some varieties of Spanish can be perceived as silly, offensive or even completely unknown to other Spanish speakers.

When translating and localizing video games in Spanish, some companies go with a form of “neutral Spanish” that has no idioms, jargon or telling accents. While this sounds like the ideal solution, it often isn’t — this “neutral” version of the language seems stiff and unreal to native Spanish speakers and can be perceived as a bad quality translation.

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