The NPD Group reports that U.S. consumers spent $7.09 billion on physical game software during 2012, while used and rental games reached $1.79 billion. Meanwhile, digital content (full game and add-on content downloads, subscriptions, mobile games and social network games) generated $5.92 billion.
“When including all other forms of content spending outside of new physical games, the 2012 U.S. games market was more than twice as large as the total spending on new physical games alone,” said Liam Callahan, industry analyst, The NPD Group. “There were divergent trends when looking at content spending in 2012 as a whole, with a decrease of 21 percent in spending on physical content while digital content spending grew 16 percent; both formats combined for a total decline of 9 percent for the year.”
