npd-group posts

Just a couple of months ago, the NPD Group released a study that said that unit sales of PC games via download was close to matching sales of games in retail stores in 2009. Today the NPD Group released a new study that claims that for the first six months of 2010 unit sales of PC games via download actually surpassed the amount of PC games sold in brick and mortar stores.

IndustryGamers reports that according to the NPD Group's study, 11.2 million copies of full games were purchased and downloaded compared to just 8.2 million copies of games that were bought in retail stores. However since sales of digital download games tend to have a smaller price point, the total dollar amount spend in retail stores is still higher with 57 percent compared to 43 percent of dollar sales via download. The study also said that overall unit sales of PC games were down 21 percent in the first half of 2010 compared to the same period last year. Dollar sales were also down 14 percent

As we mentioned back in July, the NPD Group doesn't get any direct info from PC game download sites and instead makes assumptions based on surveys of individual gamers. This has caused representatives from other PC game download sites like Impulse, Gamersgate and even Steam to question the NPD Group's numbers in the past.

August wasn't a good month for new console software and hardware sales. The NPD Group's monthly sales charts, as reported by our sister site Joystiq, state that overall console game sales were down 10 percent compared to August of 2009. But that's not the case for the PC software sales thanks in part to a little known game called StarCraft II.

Blizzard's sci-fi RTS sequel managed to sell 300,000 retail copies in the US after selling 721,000 copies when it was first released in July, according to NPD (that figure does not include sales of downloadable copies). Those numbers made the game the second best selling title in the US, console or PC, for the month of August. The sports juggernaut Madden NFL 11 sold over 1.8 million copies between its various console versions in August. Overall NPD said that retail sales of PC games went up 35 percent from the same period a year ago.

The NPD Group's recent report on the current state of the PC game digital download business was slammed by reps from two such services, Impulse and GamersGate. Now even Valve is said to be curious as to how the NPD Group came up with its numbers for its report, which it claimed that digital downloads sales of PC games were almost on a par with PC game sales at brick-and-mortar retailers.

Gamesindustry.biz quotes Valve's marketing head Doug Lombardi as saying, "we're unsure as to how they came up with those numbers, so commenting on them would feel strange. ...". However he did add that "they're starting to make strides to give everyone that information and paint a more complete picture. But again those reports that came out weren't based on any data that we've provided, so it is what is. ..."

Valve's Steam service is considered to be the leading source of PC game download sales but if Valve didn't provide the NPD Group with any numbers from their service it does lead into questions as to how the NPD Group came up with its conclusions. We've emailed the NPD Group for comment and received a response from its PR rep, saying, "Our PC Game download tracker is not a digital POS service. It is based on consumer panel survey data."

A while back the consumer sales rating company the NPD Group stopped sending out US sales of PC games in its reports. However the monthly July sales reports, as reported by Industry Games, has a big coda in the numbers. Officially the number one best selling game was NCAA Football 11 which had 368,000 copies sold for the Xbox 360 and 298,800 copies for the PS3 version.

However the July 27 release of Blizzard's PC exclusive RTS game StarCraft II beat out the combined sales of NCAA Football 11 for the month as the NPD Group said the game sold 721,000 copies in the US. According to NPD analyst Anita Frazier, the sales of StarCraft II "helped the PC games category to realize a 103 percent increase in dollars over last July."

Earlier this week the NPD Group released a study claiming that digital download sales of PC game units had almost caught up with the number of PC games sold in brick and mortar retail stores. The study also listed what the study said were the top five PC game download sites. Two of the most well known, Impulse and GamersGate, were not listed in the top 5.

Big Download contacted both PC game services for their comment on the study. The head of Impulse, Brad Wardell, has previously said that while Valve's Steam service was indeed the number one place for PC game downloads, Impulse was in the number two position with 10 percent.

Asked about his reaction to the NPD study Wardell sent this message to Big Download: "NPD's numbers on digital don't tend to have much reflection on reality. As much as I would love digital distribution to take over the world, I can't think of a single publisher (including ourselves) that sells even close to a majority of its units digitally. I am a big believer in the future of digital distribution but the numbers we typically hear from publishers is that it's about a third (which is pretty darn good btw)."

GamersGate is one of the oldest PC game download services and has a massive PC game library. Big Download got this reaction to the NPD study from the company's CEO Theodore Bergquist: "We did read the report and were actually quite surprised. We do not disclose our sales numbers and we were also not contacted during the research period of this study. That being said, from our numbers and most importantly our conversations with the leading publishers in the industry, I know we are easily one of the top retailers."

We have suspected that sales of PC games via digital downloads were gaining on sales via retail stores but today the NPD Group seems to have confirmed it. In a new study the organization says that 21.3 million copies of full PC games were purchased online in 2009 compared to 23.5 million PC game units that were sold in brick-and-mortar retail stores.

Despite the slight lead in unit numbers, PC game sales via retail stores continued to decline in 2009 as it has over the years. Digital download sales of PC games now account for 48 percent of total unit sales and 36 percent of dollar sales. As expected, Valve's Steam service is the number one source for hardcore PC game downloads, according to the study. That's followed by Direct2Drive, Blizzard.com. EA.com and Worldofwarcraft.com. Bigfishgames.com is the number one retailer for downloadable casual games.

The June console game sales numbers from NPD Group came in earlier this week and, well, they were not good. Not good at all. Software sales were down 15 percent from the same period a year ago and it doesn't look like the rest of the year will see any gains compared to 2009.

That's maybe why Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter has decided to push the panic button. Industrygamers reports that Patchter sees playing online games like the Call of Duty series online for free (PC and PS3) or via an unlimited fee (Xbox 360) has "sucked the available time away from what otherwise would be spent playing newly purchased games."

Patchter believes that Activision, who currently leads the pack in terms of multiplayer shooters, has to make the first move to charge gamers to play online. He states, "It is too early to tell whether that will be a monthly subscription, tournament entry fees, microtransaction fees, or a combination of all three, but we expect to see the company take some action by year-end, when Call of Duty Black Ops launches."

PC gamers are a older demographic group compared to other video game players. That's the consesus of a new study that was released this week by the NPD Group. The study, titled Gamer Segmentation 2010, broke up gamers into seven groups: Extreme Gamers, Avid PC Gamers, Heavy Portable Gamers, Console Gamers, Online PC Gamers, Offline PC Gamers, and Secondary Gamers.

According to the study the people that were put into the Avid PC Gamers and Offline PC Gamers groups were 42 years old compared to the average gamer who was listed as 32 years old. The amount of time spend playing PC games went up 6 percent compared to last year, according to the study. Overall gamers spend 13 hours a week playing games. Extreme gamers, who represent 4 percent of all gamers, spend the most time with just over two days a week (48.5 hours) playing games.

Most of the time, developers of massively multiplayer games keep their subscription numbers a closely guarded secret. However the trade organization the NPD Group this week released a new look at the number of US MMO players and what games they are playing.

The survey, which was based on responses from 19,000 gamers in January 2010, still shows Blizzard's World of Warcraft as the king of the MMO space with 30 percent of the respondents saying they are playing the game. Jagex's free-to-play MMO Runescape is at the number two spot with 10 percent. However the number three spot went to Turbine's Dungeons and Dragons Online with 8 percent. It's a huge jump compared to past surveys and is most likely due to Turbine's decision to switch the game from a subscription only business model to free-to-play. Our sister site Massively has even more info on the NPD Group MMO survey.

As has been shown in recent surveys, PC gaming is still moving more into digital downloads than games being sold in boxes in retail stores. However the NPD Group still looks at PC games sold in brick-and-mortar locations and they have now released the top 20 PC games sold in the US in retail stores.

The top four places belong to The Sims 3 and Star Trek Online. In fact the small expansion pack for The Sims 3, High-End Loft Stuff, was the number one best selling PC game last month. Star Trek Online took over the number two and number four (for the Collector's Edition) spots, with the main Sims 3 game in at number three.

It's interesting to compare this list with, say, the Steam weekly top 10 list. There's no Sims 3 game listed on Steam's best selling game list while Modern Warfare 2, ranked in the top five on Steam's list for some time, only comes in at number 11 on NPD's list.

You can check out the full top 20 list after the break:

[Via GamePro]