Digital downloads nearly equal to retail sales in units sold in 2009
July 23, 2010 — The NPD Group reports that US consumers downloaded full versions of 21.3 million PC games in 2009. That number was slightly below the 23.5 million physical versions of PC games purchased through retail channels.
Although these game downloads accounted for almost half of the units sold, the downloaded versions of the games made up only 36% of revenue from PC game sales.
According to NPD Group, the casual games download market was lead by bigfishgames.com, followed by pogo.com, gamehouse.com and iwin.com. However, this market’s share is being impacted by the rise in free social network gaming and free mobile gaming. Also, 97% of the people who downloaded a game app downloaded a free version of a game prior to purchase.
Read more video game research news at Video Game Industry Today:
NPD Group news – http://videogames.einnews.com/news/npd-group
Video Game Sales news – http://videogames.einnews.com/news/video-game-sales
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