Friday, NPD Group released a report showcasing the spending trends for the year 2020 (all the way through June). In this report, the numbers showed that the amount of spending on video games is the highest its ever been in 10 years. As a more concrete number, the US has spent somewhere around $6.6. billion USD on video games and video game-related equipment. The last time the spending was this high was in 2010 when the spending on game-related equipment and games was around $7 billion USD in the same period of time.
As the sales for gaming went up, however, the sales for hardware and hardware related items decreased by seventeen percent. Reportedly, sales on software and accessories in the first half of 2020 have risen 19 percent. In the month of June alone, individual game makers saw an over 20 percent increase compared to 2019’s sales (which are recorded somewhere around $1.3 billion USD). To no one’s surprise, the Nintendo Switch was June’s best selling item in terms of units and individual games sold, and The Last of Us Part II was June’s best selling game. In that same category, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Animal Crossing: New Horizons were also towards the top in the year’s best selling games.
As this is not the first time 2020 has set a record for video game sales. US spending has hit an all-time quarterly record earlier this year, and with the soon to be the release of the Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5, there is sure to be another rise with spending in both the console and the game departments.