The DICE Summit this year has certainly proved interesting. Aside from Valve's Gabe Newell and his talk about the PC gaming industry, Media Molecule's talk on user content, and lots more, we've also got this: NPD Group's industry report.
Analyst Anita Frazier for the research organization revealed some rather interesting statistics throughout the presentation, one of the most striking of just how many gamers are out there now: turns out this year we've got 61 percent more than we did last. Interestingly, 58 percent of the U.S. population from 13 and up plays video games, this keeping in mind people spend more on games than any other entertainment medium (27 percent).
In terms of PC sales, here's a doozy: retail sales have declined by over 50 percent in the last seven years. Again, popular content delivery service Steam boasts over 15 million customers, and that began nearly six years ago. It's also about the time the PlayStation 2 hit its stride. Coincidences? We think not. While they are unable to track digital downloads, they do track subscriptions, and know PC gaming is at least twice of what retail figures tell us.
As for "core" gamers, Frazier has this to say:
"The core audience is still there, but it’s small. It’s not that you should walk away from that audience, but you do have to recognize that the audience for some hardcore games is not as large as it is for more casual or family-friendly games."
Undeniably, the Wii is dominating the sales charts, both in terms of hardware and software, but aside from the Mario Karts and the Wii Fits of the world, games like Left 4 Dead and Call of Duty: World at War have recently claimed the #4 and #5 spots for all-format figures (with the latter being the #8 Wii title, no less). However, in terms of raw sales figures, the top ten are controlled by "casual" titles, totalling 1.9 million units, while the "core" games account for about 898,000. In short: casual games are selling double what "core" games are.
So what's the industry worth? Frazier pegs a "really rough estimate" at 14 billion dollars, including retail and non-retail sales.
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