Gaming and charity, the power of the gaming community

At this year’s E3, Sony stated that the PSN has over 50 million registered players, this got me thinking…

Say if a gamer buys an average of 6 different game titles per year (including gift given by friends and family, but seriously, this person is a disgrace to call oneself a gamer to own so few titles), owning at least one game console, the console manufacture (ie, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo) donates USD$1.00 per game title sold (which is actually paid upon by the user not the company), this would generate a very large sum of donation.

Why?

Like Sony stated at E3 2010, there are 50 million REGIESTERED users already on PSN, ignoring the unregistered users for all platforms, say Nintendo also have 50 million (Since Wii had such unbelievable sales record) and the same goes to Microsoft (the XBOX360), gives us 50M + 50M + 50M = 150M console owners.

Now, let’s do a little math. Each gamer buys 6 game titles a year, thus, USD$6.00 is donated per year per console owner, this times 150M users equals USD$900M. WOW, 900 MILLION DOLLARS!!!

What does this mean?

Let’s compare: The Microsoft i’m Initiative (http://im.live.com) has raised USD$3.041M since 2007 for the course of 3 years, which is roughly USD$1M per year. Take this data then divide it by the one above: 900 / 1 = 900. The gamer community could donate 900 times more than that of the i’m Initiative.

Impressive huh?

Now what can you do with USD$900M a year?

USD$1.00 per month can provide a child in africa his/her basic health care, clean water, basic education.

USD$10.00 per month to help children in India.

USD$10.00 per month to bring clean water to villages in China which are far in the montains.

Saving animals, pandas in China, white tigers in Syberia, whales etc

Better yet, invest, invent renewable energy, saving the world from green house effect.

The list goes on…