Speaking at the Casual Connect conference in Seattle this week, NPD Group analyst Anita Frazier offered some fresh numerical insights into the games business.

Currently, for the North American market, consumers are spending more on videogames then they are on going to see movies at theatres. Indeed, games make up 33 per cent of the monthly entertainment budget, averaging out to $47.79 per consumer.
 
“I really think this has been one of the most transformative years in videogaming.”  While it’s hard to say the industry is recession proof, said Frazier, “I would say it’s recession resistant.

“If the content is there, and the content is compelling, it will drive sales,” she continued. When the categories are broken down into specifics, NPD found that the pace of content has outperformed hardware and accessories.

“I still believe content is king,” said Frazier. “What you guys do is so important,” she told an audience of developers and publishers. “It drives the industry.”

When it comes to measuring the industry, Frazier said that the retail side of things doesn’t represent the whole business anymore. NPD now researches subscriptions, and separately, digital downloads.

Information originating from NPD’s gamer segmentation study – which examined nine different types of downloadable content, such as music tracks and map packs, across seven segments of gamers, from casual to avid – showed that players were currently willing to pay less across all nine DLC categories than they were a year earlier.

Today, they’re willing to pay less. But Frazier said, “It’s their attitudes and opinions,” not sales data. “I would take that as directional reporting.”

Words by N. Evan Van Zelfden