NPD Group: Overall Game Spending in 2010 the Same as in 2009

The NPD Group, the company that tracks hardware and video game sales for the North American market, has announced that internal projections show that overall spending on gaming during 2010 has reached between 15.4 and 15.6 billion dollars, which is pretty much the same number as reported for 2009.

The number stands in contrast with the year long decline which the NPD Group has been reporting in sales of new hardware and new software, where the decline stands around 5 percent for 2010.

The explanation for the seemingly disparate trends is linked to the rise of the microtransaction driven PC gaming sector and to the shifts in the second hand market.

Digital revenue is also on the increase, powering most of PC gaming based sales, and rentals are also an important segment, despite the measures that publishers are taking to limit the importance of second hand and rentals.

Anita Frazier, who is an analyst working for the NPD Group, has stated, “The dynamics of games content purchasing changed dramatically in 2010 with options ranging from the physical product to digital downloads on connected devices as well as in-store digital kiosks.”

She added, “The increasing number of ways to acquire the content has allowed the industry to maintain total consumer spend on content as compared to 2009, and we should expect 2011 to be a growth year in the games industry as the consumer demand for gaming continues to evolve.”

The NPD Group has also shown the top ten of video games sold in 2010, with three of them, New Super Mario Bros Wii, Modern Warfare 2 and Wii Fit Plus, coming from 2009.

The leader is, of course, Call of Duty: Black Ops, with Madden NFL 11 taking second and Hal: Reach taking third.

On the PC Blizzard dominated the market through the launches of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty and the Cataclysm expansion for the MMO World of Warcraft.