Gamefest: NPD Update on US Gaming Market

I think I mentioned yesterday that I’ve been at Gamefest (Microsoft’s game developer conference). We have a variety of sessions and tracks covering game development, programming, production, and marketing. Today I attended a session presented by Anita Frazier from the NPD Group where she gave an update on the US gaming market. Thought some of the data points were interesting, and wanted to share (with NPD’s permission). This is nowhere near the complete presentation, so don’t be surprised if you see other data points on the web later. Oh, and please note that this data is copyright NPD.

Random Interesting Datapoints (or RID):

• NPD covers US game market with combination of retail sales and consumer panel data
  


• YTD US Game industry +7% to 5.4B (with Q4 spike still ahead)
  Q: Why Q4? A: 50-60% of sales in Q4 are for gift-giving purposes
  


• Survey: of 13-44 year olds:
  Roughly 33% play games online
  Roughly 33% play games offline
  Roughly 33% don’t play games at all
  


• PC dominates online play at over 75%
  Puzzle/arcade/word games dominate PC online play at over 70%
  60% of gamers are willing to pay to play online (if content is of interest)
  


• Xbox 360 raised console online play bar
  PS2 – 51% online capable titles actually played online by users during sample time
  Xbox – 55% online capable titles actually played online
  360 – 84% online capable titles played online
  (Unclear what “online capable” is. Probably multiplayer support.)
  


• 92% of sales occurred in traditional stores
  7% online (.com)
  1% catalog
  


• Walmart/[Gamestop/EB Games]/Best Buy/Target = 74% retail sales
  


• Video game console penetration still below 40% in US
  


• Potential of mobile gaming huge – 140M game capable cell phones in hands of US consumers today… but far from saturated
  30% already play mobile games on their phone
  Average price of downloaded game: 5.31
  Average game session: 11 minuutes
  Number one reason to play games on cell phone: to kill time
  


• 18-34 year old male – is this really the “core gamer”? (Measured by unit sales)
  18-34 = 28% of market (aka “core gamer”)
  kids 9-12 = 24% (almost as large as core gamer)
  teenage 13-17 = 18% (kids + teens = larger than core gamer… surprise!)
  


• Player Segmentation Insights: (By behavior – what/how do they play):
  Heavy Gamers – 3.6M people – 3% of system owners
  Avid Console Gamers – 32.7M people – 28% of system owners
  Mass Market – 24.9M people – 22% of system owners (GTA, Kingdom Hearts, etc.)
  Prefer Portable – 14.7M people – 13% of system owners
  Secondary Gamers – 10.1M people – 9% of system owners (play alongside of other people in HH)
  Infrequent Gamers – 8.8M people – 8% of system owners
  Non-players – 19M people – 17% of system owners (already have systems in home, but rarely play. Not finding content they want to play)
  


• PDZ – 49.5% attach to 360 in first two months
  COD2 – 84% attach to 360 in first two months (highest)

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