U.S. consumers spent up to $2.9 billion buying video games through mobile phones, social networks, downloads and subscriptions in the first half of 2010, research firm NPD said on Friday. The figures include used video game sales.
It's the first time NPD has released non-traditional video game sales figures and provides evidence that consumer spending on video games is 40 percent larger than it previously believed. The research firm had estimated that non-traditional sales are at least $2.6 billion and as high as $2.9 billion.
On contrary, NPD's retail sales numbers for video game software and equipment has not shown a very encouraging picture. The research firm reported that sales of video game software and equipment fell 8 percent in September. Software sales fell 6 percent to $614 to million while hardware sales tumbled 19 percent to $383 million.
Thus mediums like mobile phones, social networks, downloads and subscriptions have increasingly becoming a popular way of buying games. Although, after the advent of mobile devices of all sizes and characters, traditional video games industry needs to have some dramatic or jumping the curve changes to it present business model; it may also be that they may be encroaching on the traditional video games sales too (a possibility which appears very real), that too in big way. The later speculation needs some more statistical backing.
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