Consumers in the United States have spent just over $27 billion on video games and related goods in 2019, a slight 1 percent increase from the same 9 month period in 2018 according to the NPD Group.
Of that, the group notes that digital console content, mobile, and subscription spending saw “double-digit percentage gains” while hardware, accessories, physical console content, and digital PC content all declined.
Video game content in the quarter ending September 30 alone saw $8.1 billion in sales, up 3 percent year-over-year and driven by mobile, subscription, and digital console content sales. Spending on game content is up 3 percent year-to-date, though the NPD Group notes the same isn’t the case for hardware spending.
As the end of the current console generation approaches, the NPD’s numbers show year-to-date hardware sales down 23 percent year-over-year, coming in at $1.9 billion for the first 9 months of the year. The Nintendo Switch continues to sell well, the group points out, but that growth was not enough to offset declines felt across other console families.