NPD Group: Only 6 Percent of Customers Get Digital Content

A new report from the NPD Group, which tracks video games sales and hardware in the United States, has stated that only 6 percent of consumers in the United States have downloaded any form of content using their home gaming consoles.

Only about 15 percent of them connected other devices, like the PC or Mac, and downloaded content through them with another 4% using a smartphone and 2 percent doing the same on a connected digital player or Blu-ray device.

The great majority of potential customers in the United States were not interested in getting any content via download.

Russ Crupnick, who is an senior entertainment analyst and vice president at the NPD Group, has stated, “What we learned in our research is that while some people already experience the world in a connected way, most do not.”

Anita Frazier, an analyst watching the video game industry, said, “Today’s gamer might be a hard-core teenager playing games online with his friends, a 40-something female playing Farmville on Facebook, or everything on either side of that spectrum. We would not have seen this type of audience diversification and expansion if it weren’t for connected internet, smartphone, and online gaming options.”

It seems that gamers are interested in getting content via download and they are looking for connectivity possibilities in the devices they get but they fail to follow through once they actually have them in their living room.

Downloading content is becoming more important on the PC platform, with the NPD Group earlier confirming that the overall number of video games sold through digital distribution services exceeded the number moves through more traditional retail means.

This is not also happening on consoles like the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii, in part because platform owners are not interested in offering big titles via download at the same time as they are launched in stores.