Curious as to how much revenue is being generated by the non-physical retail gaming market? There’s an app for that… or a research company, at least.
Curious as to how much revenue is being generated by the non-physical retail gaming market? There’s an app for that… or a research company, at least.
The NPD Group has released data which states that in the fourth quarter of 2011, the video game industry managed to generate $3.3 billion in revenue from sources which don’t involve buying new copies from brick-and-mortar stores. More specifically, this sum represents used games, digital sales, social games, rentals, downloadable content, mobile games, and subscriptions from throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
As you might expect, the U.S. was the greatest contributor to the total, weighing in at $2.04 billion. The U.K. came in a distant second with nearly $508 million, while Germany and France followed with $461 million and $320 million, respectively.
Sam Naji, a European industry analyzer, stated “Now that we’ve established our Europe-based service covering the U.K., France, and Germany, we can begin working directly with clients to help them dissect at deeper levels how the unique market drivers specific to each country can help them understand the increasingly global nature of the games industry.”
“It’s fascinating to see the nuances in consumer behavior across geographies,” added NPD analyst Anita Frazier. “Clearly these other forms of content acquisition do not follow as consistent of a trend as we see with the established box product business in the U.S.”
