My, How We've Grown

By Paul Hunter

Something extraordinary is happening here at NextGen Player. This time last year our site was just beginning to emerge out of obscurity as a fresh, independent voice for the Canadian gaming scene. My, how a lot can change in year.

Having just recently celebrated our first birthday, I decided to look into our growth by seeing how we our first three months of existence (May-July 2008) compare to our last three months (May-July 2009). As it turns out, we've welcomed 50,000 readers during the period this year compared to about 15,000 the year prior. That represents a 233% increase year-over-year. Incredible!

I've always considered NextGen Player to be this hungry, 800 lb gorilla that's looking to be the pulse of the Canadian gamer. The rationale for starting the site was that Canada, being the third largest gaming industry in the world, needs to have a strong voice that tells the rest of the world our stories. It was an interesting experiment, and I wasn't sure whether gamers would be all that interested in Canadian-centric news. Well, as it turns out our readers can't get enough of it and I couldn't be more happy.

To put our growth into perspective, consider this: if you compare our size on Alexa to that of major Canadian gaming websites such as Electric Playground or GamingExcellence, we're neck-and-neck. How we've grown that fast I'll never know, but it sure is encouraging.

At the end of the day, I have to say it's been such a blast working on this site and I hope this growth spurt is only the beginning of something much larger. The days of Canada being small potatoes is long over -- like it or not our country a global gaming leader. Personally, with all the encouraging news such as Ubisoft moving to Toronto, Vancouver's rapid and expanding industry, and the powerhouse that is Quebec, Canada's role in the global gaming industry is only going to get larger.

And we'll be there to cover every minute of it.

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