Study Says 90% of Games Bought at Retail, Macs Apparently Have Games
The NPD Group, a group that likes to find things out about stuff, has recently released information that shows the vast majority of games or add-ons purchased for new or used consoles occur away from the internet. 90% of all sales during Q3 were made from brick and mortar locations. Not only that, but dual format purchasers, those of us who know how to use the internet, represent about 19 percent of gaming buyers.
All the numbers seem really, really low to me for digital purchases. I can’t help but think they missed something, but what do I know, I write about stuff online in my underwear and the NPD Group probably wears snazzy suits and yell into their cellphones about metrics and people breaking their balls.
From NPD’s Anita Frazier:
“While physical retail product remains the driving force behind industry sales, the role of digital distribution in the games ecosystem continues to climb.”
This is very surprising to me, mostly because of how low the number seems to be. As far as I know, the Live Arcade and Steam make a whole lot of rupees on digital distribution, like an astronomical amount. If that only accounts for 10% of total sales, does that mean video games are making 60 Billion Double Dollars a quarter? Or did we all just not buy any games online that quarter, feeling nostalgic for the cold, clammy embrace of one of the thirty six Gamestops in a mile radius from our houses?
It also goes on to say that 79 percent of games acquired for handhelds, phones, and the PC are purchased in physical format. Well, it said PC/Mac but that is just silly since the last game to come out on the Mac was Ultima VI or something. That stat also seems a bit off, as iPhones account for a huge amount of game downloads now, and that isn’t something you can physically purchase either way. The app store is an entirely ethereal thing, existing only in our mind’s wildest imaginations.
It goes a step further and mentions in the report that about 6 million gamers sail the high seas of piracy, and that 72 percent of illicit downloads happen for the PC- and the Mac, but, once again, Photoshop doesn’t count as a game so I wonder about its inclusion. The numbers sound right, but Modern Warfare 2 was downloaded 4.1 million times alone. If only 6 million gamers are pirates, that is a huge percentage of them that hijacked Infinity Wards vessel and balanced it for free.
Stats don’t lie though, I guess. I mean unless you are a conservative trying to justify why Universal Health Care is stupid or why Obama was born in space or something, then your stats totally lie. But in this case they probably don’t, which kind of shows you what a minority those of us wandering the wasteland of the world wide web really are no matter how large we seem in our own little microcosm. So the next time you start banging your sword against your shield in anger that a company didn’t cater to the net denizens, remember that we only accounted for 10% of their sales.
And then download it illegally. What? What did I say?
[Source: VG247]
