Research shows $2.87 billion spent on Video Game content in the U.S. for third quarter 2012

According to the Q3 2012 Games Market Dynamics: U.S.* report from leading market research company, The NPD Group, in addition to the $1.07 billion spent in the U.S. by consumers on new physical video and PC game software in the third quarter of 2012 (July - Sept), the total consumer spend on other physical forms of content (used and rental) reached $399 million, and content in digital format (full game and add-on content downloads, subscriptions, mobile games and social network games) generated $1.40 billion.

"When including overall consumer content spending across both digital and physical formats in Q3 2012, there was a positive story for the industry," said Liam Callahan, industry analyst, The NPD Group. "Despite declines in physical format spending of 16 percent from Q3 2011, strong growth in digital format spending, up 22%, helped offset this decline and led to 1 percent decline in content spending from the same quarter last year. Mobile App spending, digital full game downloads, and downloadable add-on content were the areas within digital format spending that helped drive this increase."

Methodology

The estimates are published in NPD's report, Games Market Dynamics: U.S. (formerly known as the Games Industry: Total Consumer Spend) -released by The NPD Group in August 2012 - and are derived leveraging NPD's portfolio of physical POS tracking (Retail Tracking Service) and consumer research including the Games Acquisition Monitor, Video Game and PC Game Subscriptions Report and Consumer Tracking Service. It also incorporates consumer spend estimation provided by NPD retail and publisher partners, and calibration with third-party sources.