By Alec Meer on September 20th, 2010.
So says US market research group the NPD, who currently rule the roost in terms of game sales figures by dint of no-one else doing it properly. Today, they give with one hand and take with the other.
Give! US PC game download sales for the first six months of the year popularly known as Twenty Ten finally outweigh old-fashioned high street retail – by 11.2 million to 8.2 million units, to be precise. Well, I say precise… we’ll get to that in a minute. Read the rest of this entry »
By Alec Meer on July 24th, 2010.
Some people aren’t at all happy about those NPD charts listing the most successful digital distribution services. Those people being, specifically, the bosses of two of the biggest services, which rather oddly didn’t make the top five – it instead being dominated by Valve, EA, Blizzard and Direct2Drive. Impulse and Gamersgate think something is rotten in the state of down-chart….
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By Alec Meer on July 21st, 2010.
US receipt-collectors NPD are finally encompassing digital distribution in their regular surveys. Which is just as well, as half the time it’s been their bloody surveys which have caused nitwits to cry “the PC is doomed” (most recently, they claimed a 23% drop in PC game sales from 2008 to 2009). They’re now estimating that download sales constitute 48% of the PC market, which means previous recent surveys have ignored about 21.3 million units. Whole lotta cash. That’s even before you factor in the giant cash-pile generated from free-to-play games’ microtransactions and whatnot.
Oh, and the NPD have also put out a list of the five biggest digital distributors in the world today. Can you guess which is number one? I’ll give you a clue. It’s not Steam.
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By Jim Rossignol on March 3rd, 2010.
A new NPD survey, published yesterday, suggests the average amount of time spent in online gaming grew by 10% in 2009. The number of digitally downloaded games purchased also grew for the third year in a row. Well, duh. Perhaps the most interesting statistic, however, is that the PC still dominates online gaming: “The PC is still the most-used system for online gaming, with 85% of online gamers reporting using a PC for online gaming activities.” The overall population of people playing online has, however, dropped slightly, which seems kind of odd/unlikely to me, given the Facebook gaming boom.
By Alec Meer on May 14th, 2009.
Giving the monthly PC sales charts a sideways eyeball now and again is always interesting. Yeah, it’s short-sighted of the NPD to not include digital sales in any form, but nonetheless it’s some sort of picture as to what’s going on in the wider world of PC gaming. Beneath the cut: game names, with numbers next to them. You’d never have guessed. There are a couple of bonafide surprises in there, however.
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By Kieron Gillen on January 28th, 2008.
The NPD have released their figures for US PC retail sales in 2007, as reported by GameDaily. The biggest sellers? I’m glad you asked.
1. World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade – Vivendi (Blizzard) – 2.25 million
2. World of Warcraft – Vivendi (Blizzard) – 914K
3. The Sims 2 – Electronic Arts – 534K
4. The Sims 2 Seasons Expansion Pack – Electronic Arts – 433K
5. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare – Activision – 383K
6. Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars – Electronic Arts – 350K
7. MS Age of Empires III – Microsoft – 313K
8. Sim City 4 – Electronic Arts – 294K
9. MS Flight Simulator X – Microsoft – 280K
10. The Sims 2 Bon Voyage Expansion Pack – Electronic Arts – 272K
That includes sales from every multi-pack you can imagine. The total value of PC Games retail is $910 million, which is down $60 million from 2006 (Which itself was up from 2005′s $953 million (Which was down from 2004′s $1.1 Billion (No, really))).
And some analysis follows. Maybe even with jokes added to taste. Read the rest of this entry »
