2008? Not exactly a good year for business. Unless that business was videogames – new stats from NPD show that Americans spent an incredible $21 Billion on video game hardware, software and accessories. That’s an astounding increase of 19% over 2007’s figures. Gamers are apparently too busy tea-bagging downed Spartan foes, wiggling their bums pretending to hula-hoop or sneaking around in Octocamo to realise that there’s a recession going on.
There’s a bunch more numbers coming your way, so grab a cup of coffee and read the rest after the jump.
Worldwide, sales of home entertainment goods amounted to $61 Billion – multitudes more than the annual budgets of many countries. Of this, video game related sales accounted for $32 Billion, which is the monetary equivalent of about 13 Billion Big Macs. That’s a lot of sesame seeds. It’s also 53% of the total – meaning that video games have for the first time surpassed sales of more traditional home entertainment – DVD and Blu-Ray.
Much of that revenue, of course, ended up in Nintendo’s coffers. In the US alone, Nintendo had the highest selling console – The Wii – as well as the highest selling game and accessory, with Wii Play’s 5.28 million bundled Wii Remotes killing two birds with one rather lucrative stone. Other big US sellers for the Japanese money vacuum were Mario Kart Wii (5 million units) and Wii Fit – which was responsible for calling nearly 4.53 million Americans obese.
2008. A pretty good year for games then. With this sort of momentum, it’s not surprising that analysts reckon 2009 is going to be even better – Global sales of video games are expected to top $36 Billion, further eroding DVD/Blu-Ray market share.
Source : Gamespot
Last Updated: January 27, 2009
V@mp
January 27, 2009 at 08:32
So let’s hear the “video-games-are-evil” brigade
say “thank you” for keeping the economy going :biggrin: