Video games are on people’s minds a lot these days. A new report that tracks monthly gaming expenses finds that players are spending more real-world dollars for a chance to spend all of those in-game. Fortnite V-Bucks, Final Fantasy Gil, and Animal crossing bells that at any time in the last 10 years.
Market analysis firm NPD Group has just downloaded a ton of new game sales figures spanning the first half of 2020 as well as June. The industry hit a new sales record of $ 6.6 billion in the US alone during the first half of 2020, the highest total since mid-year figures came in June 2009, according to NPD analyst Matt Piscatella. That includes a record $ 1.2 billion spending on gaming in the US June alone:
The $ 6.6 billion sales figure covers everything related to games, from software to consoles, peripherals and online services. It’s a staggering number that would likely outperform the national box office of movies, even in years when there has not been a pandemic that keeps summer blockbusters off limits in theaters. While NPD publishes global figures separately, the increase could indicate 2020 to be a bigger year for games worldwide than 2019, when the $ 120 billion spend on digital games only topped triple the global box office of films.
As for the games themselves, the numbers have few surprises. Great internal releases like Final Fantasy VII Remake and The last of us, part II gave Sony a big boost for the PS4 in the first half of the year, with TLOU2 especially breaking records in the June release window (some of which Redo it had just broken just a few weeks earlier.) Microsoft’s top June sales come from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Grand Theft Auto V, In addition to getting a significant boost from the Xbox Elite Series 2 Wireless Controller, June’s best-selling accessory in a record month for peripherals. Nintendo, meanwhile, went ahead with Animal Crossing: New Horizons ranking first in games, with the Switch outperforming all other consoles in overall sales as well as individual units sold.
While gaming has historically been on the rise for the past decade, the pandemic’s role in encouraging home entertainment has likely accelerated double-digit video sales percentage jumps in the spring months since the games went into effect. social distancing measures. And whether it’s a pandemic or not, Sony recently decided to double its pre-release output from PlayStation 5 consoles, moving its original production order from 5 million units to 10 million.
With Switch production on the rise and new consoles from Sony and Microsoft on the way before the end of the year, plus great cross-platform games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Spider-Man: Miles Morales on the horizon: the second half of 2020 marks a bright future for the video game business. More importantly for gamers, it also suggests that developers will keep their feet on the gas to get new games in the hands of gamers, as much of the US gets rid of the protracted pandemic from home.
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