NPD Group: United States Video Game Spending Will Top 4.5 Billion Dollars

The NPD Group, a market research firm which often deals with issues in the video game industry, is estimating that the total amount which will be spent on gaming hardware, content, services and accessories will reach 4.5 billion dollars (about 3.4 billion Euro at current exchange rates) for the second half of the year in the United States.

If the figure proves to be correct it will represent an increase of 1 percent over the same period during last year.

The report is called NPD's Q2 2011 Games Industry: Total Consumer Spend says that 1.44 billion dollars were spent directly on new physical games for both the PC and consoles and that another 1.74 billion were linked to the used games market, subscriptions, full game downloads via digital distribution, social games, DLC, mobile games and rentals.

Anita Frazier, who is an analyst working for the NPD Group, has stated, “While the new physical retail channel still generates the majority of industry sales, our expanded research coverage allows us to assess the total consumer spend across the growing number of ways to acquire and experience gaming, including mobile apps and downloadable content.”

Another report from the NPD Group mentioned that the amount of money spent on digital video game products went up by 17 percent over the last two years, with the entire industry shifting to more content that is delivered to players without the need for physical media.

The video game industry was affected by the worldwide economic slump which has started in 2008 and does not seem ready to disappear anytime soon, with the industry seeing decrease in sales from the pre-crisis peak of as much as 20 percent month over month.

The NPD Group also launches monthly sales charts for both hardware and software for the United States market, which have been recently dominated by the Xbox 360 home console from Microsoft.