US videogame fans are spending billions of dollars on digital content and play without setting foot in real-world retail shops, according to figures released on Friday by NPD Group.
An estimated US$2.6 billion to US$2.9 billion were spent in the first half of this year on game content or play in “non-traditional” venues, including smartphones and online social networks.
A first-ever Total Consumer Spend report by NPD factored in sales of videogame software downloaded online, as well as mobile phone applications, game rentals, subscriptions and used titles.
Industry tracker NPD is striving to adapt to an evolving videogame market being shaped by hot trends such as “social play” at Facebook or other online communities and games sold as downloads instead of packaged goods.
Real-world stores still account for the majority of videogame industry sales, but expanding the research allows a “more comprehensive measure of a dynamic and rapidly changing games industry,” NPD analyst Anita Frazier said.
Approximately US$3.7 billion were spent in US stores on software for games played on videogame consoles or personal computers in the first half of the year, NPD said.
Figures released on Thursday by NPD showed that revenue from videogame hardware and titles at stores tallied US$1.22 billion, 8 percent less than the US$1.32 billion taken in during the same month last year.
“While industry sales of new physical retail sales show a decline versus year ago, it’s important to remember that there is a growing volume of content being sold digitally,” Frazier said.
Sales of videogame consoles totaled US$383 million, down 19 percent from the US$472 million logged in September last year, NPD said.
The one area in which sales rose was videogame accessories.
Sony’s freshly released Move motion-sensing controllers for PlayStation 3 (PS3) consoles credited for helping drive accessories sales of US$180 million, up 13 percent from the same month last year.
Points cards that can be used for buying digital content at Xbox 360 Live and PS3 online game play networks were the most popular accessories, in that order, NPD said.
“The success of these items at retail, points to the growing importance of sales via digital distribution,” Frazier said.
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