Digital game sales figures announced for US and EU

22 March 2012

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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  1. CeeZedCee
    22.03.2012 at 19:10

    D2D wanted to rent out games but they were bought by some American company.

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