The NPD Group is a market research company which provides comprehensive consumer and retail information for a wide range of industries. Now we have word that according to The NPD Group, US retail sales of video games generated revenues of close to 19.66 billion USD in 2009, which is an 8 percent decline compared to the 21.4 billion USD generated in 2008. Retail sales of video games include portable and console hardware, software as well as accessories.
Retail sales in the PC game software industry also declined, with revenues down by about 23 percent, generating 538 million USD in 2009. While the total portable and PC game software industry generated 10.5 billion USD in 2009, which is an 11 percent decline vs. the 11.7 billion USD generated during the previous year.
“December sales broke all industry records and underscores the incredible value consumers find in computer and video games even in a down economy,” remarked Michael D. Gallagher, president and CEO of the Entertainment Software Association, the trade group which represents U.S. computer and video game publishers. “This is a very strong way to transition into 2010. I anticipate these solid sales numbers to continue upward through 2010 with a pipeline full of highly-anticipated titles.”
Portable hardware was the only category which experienced an increase (6 percent) in revenue in 2009. The largest decline came from console hardware which declined by about 13 percent. Console software and portable software both saw declines of 10 percent, and video game accessories declined by about 1 percent.
“When we started the last decade, video game industry sales, including PC games, totaled $7.98B in 2000,” stated Anita Frazier, industry analyst, The NPD Group. “In ten years, the industry has changed dramatically in many ways, but most importantly it was grown over those years by more than 250 percent at retail alone. Considering there are many new sources of revenue including subscriptions and digital distribution, industry growth is even more impressive.”
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for the Xbox 360 from Activision released in November 2009 was the highest grossing console video game, while The Sims 3 for PC from EA released in June 2009 topped the list of Top 10 PC Software titles.