The NPD Group has issued a new report on the state of the games industry in the US. It claims that during the second quarter of 2011, US consumers spend a total of $4.5 billion for games, along with game related hardware and accessories, between the months of April and June of 2011. Those numbers represent a small 1 percent increase compared to the same time period a year ago.
The report claims that consumers sent $1.44 billion in both console and PC games in traditional brick-and-mortar retail outsets. However, revenues from other outlets, including sales of used games, rentals of console games, downloadable sales of game titles, mobile phone-based games and more, totaled $1.74 billion for the second quarter. NPD"s Anita Frazier says, "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."
In a separate report that was published by the NPD Group on Tuesday, it said that kids have increased the amount they have spent on digital-based entertainment. Downloads of game content has increased by 17 percent over the last two years for that age group. That compares to an increase of 14 percent for digital music content and an increase of 13 percent for movie downloads. The NPD Group added that according to its study, 50 percent of kids have downloaded some kind of digital content by the time they reach seven years of age.