14 DAY TRIAL // The NPD Group, which offers monthly retail numbers for the United States video game market, has announced that during the first quarter of 2012 the industry has managed to generate sales of 3.4 billion dollars (2.69 billion Euro).
According to the firm, new retail-based purchases accounted for 1.5 billion dollars (1.19 billion Euro) of the value.
Used and rental titles in physical form accounted for about another third of the money spent on new packaged games and the rest was linked to digital content, which includes full game sales, DLC for them, subscriptions, social network based games and mobile titles.
Anita Frazier, who is an analyst working at the NPD Group, said, “A broader view of the games industry shows that other physical content sales (the combination of used and rental) declined by just five percent and digital format content sales grew by 10% as compared to Q1 2011.”
The increase of the digital space is also clear in other territories like the United Kingdom, France and Germany.