The video game industry scenario in the US is looking up despite the economic fallout caused by the pandemic.
Industry tracking group NPD has reported a strong growth in the US video game market. In January 2021, American video game sales were pegged at $4.71 billion, a 42% increase from last year, reports GamesIndustry.
Video game hardware sales took a leap of 144% YoY increase from $131 million last year to $319 million in January of 2021.
https://twitter.com/MatPiscatella/status/1360637492257411072
Sales of video game content surged to $4.17 billion, a 36% increase from last year. On the other hand the accessory market had the second best growth margin by an increase of 73%, $222 million as opposed to $128 million last year.
According to Mat Piscatella, Executive Director & Video Game Industry Advisor of the NPD group, the Nintendo Switch was the best-selling console in units sold for the last month of January.
“Unit sales of Nintendo Switch were the highest of any platform in a January since the Nintendo Wii in January 2010,” he informed via a tweet.
The PlayStation 5, being a more expensive device, was the best-selling console in terms of dollars sold. The PS5 DualSense Wireless Controller White was the best-selling accessory of January while the PlayStation Pulse 3D Wireless Headset White was the best-selling headset/headphone. The DualSense’s healthy performance is despite the ‘drift issues’ that came to light on social media recently.
Among the top five highest grossing games across different platforms are — Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops: Cold War came out as the top achiever, followed closely by Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, Marvel’s Spider man: Miles Morales and Madden NFL 21.
Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt Red’s most recent game, which was mired in several controversies immediately after its release, performed the worst, tanking the chart, moving from 2nd position on the list to 18th in just one month. CDPR servers faced a ransomware attack on the 9th of February, causing the company’s stocks to plummet 24 points. The hacker managed to siphon critical information through internal records and several of CDPR game source codes before putting them up for auction on the dark net.
The Canadian Scene
In another report, the NPD group put Canadian video game hardware, software and accessory sales at a record ten years high. Canadian consumers overall spending on new physical hardware, software and accessories and digital console and PC content increased 29% over 2019.
“The growth in the video game industry that we saw earlier in the pandemic continued throughout Q4,” said Joan Ramsay, industry analyst for Canada Entertainment at The NPD Group. “Growth across almost all gaming segments drove the market to record spending in both the fourth quarter and the year. The launch of new hardware consoles from Sony and Microsoft in November, combined with continued strong sales from the Nintendo Switch, resulted in strong sales not only of the hardware but in purchases of ancillary accessories and content.”
