Market research company NPD Group has revealed that in the fourth quarter of 2011, consumer spend on digital gaming content reached a combined total of 3.33-billion USD (approximately 25-billion ZAR).

For visualisation purposes, if we assume that the average price of an American pizza is $16 and that 3.33-billion USD can buy 208,125,000 pizzas; and that the average height of an ordinary large pizza is 1.5cm; and that the height of the Eiffel Tower is 324 meters – we can then safely assume that 3.33-billion USD is equivalent to 9,635 Eiffel Tower-sized pizza stacks worth of digital game downloads.

In fact, a pizza would hit the spot right now.

$2.04-billion is the majority share of the fourth quarter digital sales revenue and is held by usual big spender, the United States, with the key European countries – UK, Germany and France – managing a combined total of $1.29-billion.

The UK’s purchases contributed to $508-million, Germany $461-million and France with $320-million.

Sales include used games, game rentals, subscriptions, digital full-game downloads, social network games, downloadable content and mobile games.

How “used game” sales factor into digital research remains a mystery. If you have any ideas, feel free to leave a comment below and on the MyGaming forum.

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