Mired in a six-year-long slump, the traditional video game industry is making a modest comeback this year.
Through the first half of 2014, physical sales of video game products in the United States are actually up on an annual basis, thanks to a huge jump in sales of video game consoles. In June alone, consumers spent three times as much on game machines as they did in the same month last year, according to a new report from NPD Group, a market research firm.
That s almost certainly due to the launch of new, high-priced game machines last fall. In November, Sony and Microsoft released the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One, respectively.
For the first six months of the year, U.S. consumers spent about $1.66 billion on video game hardware, according to NPD. That was up some 63 percent from the same period in 2013.
Consumers spent $4.48 billion on all traditional video game products — including game consoles, portable game machines, software and accessories — in the first half of 2014. That was up about 9 percent from last year.
In June, consumers spent $736 million on game-related products and $292.7 million on game hardware. Those figures were up 24 percent and 106 percent from June 2013.
While hardware sales are going great guns, software sales have fared poorly so far this year. Compared with the first half of last year, sales of console games are down about 13 percent to $1.7 billion.
According to NPD, declines in sales of portable game machines and software helped depress overall hardware sales in June and caused the drop in software sales for the month.
Still, the industry likely appreciates the overall growth. Since topping out at $21.4 billion in annual sales in 2008, the traditional game industry has consistently shrunk. Last year, total sales of physical game products came in at less than $13 billion.
NPD has attributed the long-term decline in large part to a shift in consumer spending away from dedicated game machines and packaged games toward mobile devices and digitally distributed games.
Photo of the Xbox One console by Al Powers/Invision/AP, File.
