GDC 2013: Digital game growing year-to-year by 33 percent, according to NPD

While talking to attendees at GDC, data shown by NPD, iResearch and Digi-Capital analysts showed that digital game and downloadable content sales are growing year-to-year by 33 percent.

The speakers also highlighted that sales in China are expected to have a 10 percent increase year-to-year for the next three years.

NPD analyst Liam Callahan revealed to attendees that digital content sales in the U.S. have reached $5.9 billion in 2012, while sales in the U.K. reached $1.7 billion. Germany follows with $1.4 billion in digital content sales and France with $1 billion. More specifically, according to Callahan, digital content constitutes 40 percent of the United States’ total spend on games, up 20 percent from 2010.

Looking more at what composed overall sales, NPD estimates that roughly 48 percent, or $7.1 billion, of the $14.8 billion spent on games in the U.S. were from purchasing new games at retail. The other 51 percent was comprised of digital games and downloadable content ($2.22 billion), mobile games ($2.11 billion), used games ($1.59 billion), subscriptions ($1.05 billion), social network gaming ($544 million) and rentals ($198 million).

A telling statistic, on the other hand, is that sales of used games have dropped 17.1 percent from 2011.

Source: GamesIndustry.biz