It appears that spending on video games has slowed compared to the growth seen last year. Per recent data [press release] from The NPD Group, consumer spending on video game products in Q3 2021 grew by 7% year-over-year (y-o-y) compared to the 24% growth reported during the same quarter last year.
Total industry consumer spending on video gaming reached $13.3 billion in the third quarter of 2021.
Reflecting a modest 4% y-o-y growth, video game content sales reached $11.7 billion, with games such as “Among Us,” “Animal Crossing: New Horizons,” and “Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War” listed among the best-selling and most played games of the quarter. The NPD Group also points out that subscription content was the only content segment to see double-digit y-o-y gains.
Sales of gaming hardware grew by a full 60% over the same quarter last year. Nintendo Switch comes out on top as the best selling hardware platform in unit sales for the quarter, while Sony’s PlayStation 5 had the highest hardware consumer spending during that time. In the meantime, accessories experienced a y-o-y dip of 1%.
Although growth in video game spending has dropped off for the last two quarters, previous research from The NPD Group shows that not only has the share of Americans who play video games remained consistently high, the amount of time they spend playing video games per week has continued to increase over the past couple of years.
Read the full press release here.
About the Data: The NPD Group data includes the purchase of video games hardware, software and accessories, as well as spending on PC games.
