As the price of new video game titles increases year after year, data from Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and The NPD Group reveals that gamers in the United States spent a total of $56.6 billion in games last year, stabilizing the back-to-back record years in 2020 and 2021.
ESA President and CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis said, “This latest report underscores the video game industry’s leadership as a driving force in the U.S. economy, as well as for innovative and creative entertainment. These numbers also reinforce the widespread role video games play in bringing joy and connection to American households.”
These numbers include profit from all content categories, ranging from full-game, post-launch and subscription spending across console, cloud, mobile, portable, PC, and VR platforms as well as hardware and accessories.
Mat Piscatella, video game industry advisor of The NDP Group commented, “U.S. consumer spending on video game content, hardware and accessories totalled $7.6 billion in December 2022 – an increase of 2% when compared to a year ago – bringing full year 2022 spending to $56.6 billion. Factors impacting 2022 spending included continued supply constraints of console hardware, a relatively light slate of new premium releases and macroeconomic conditions. With a highly anticipated slate of new games and the reduction or even elimination of console hardware supply constraints, 2023 could very well see the market return to growth.”
However, video game sales did see a decrease of 5%, with console sales reaching $6.57 billion in 2022, an 8% year-over-year increase, with more than $1.5 billion spent on consoles in December 2022 alone. Approximately$47.5 billion was generated from content spending, while accessory sales reached $2.5 billion, a 7% and 8% decrease from 2021.
“The holiday season saw an expected uptick in spend across genres with the biggest month-over-month gains in December from Geolocation (Pokémon Go) up 17%, Simulation (Roblox) up 15%, Action (Genshin Impact) up 15% and Shooters (Call of Duty Mobile) up 14%,” said Dennis Yeh, gaming insights, Sensor Tower, Inc. “These genres are relatively top-heavy with games that could benefit from gift card usage and holiday-based live ops or events.”
Although we’re still in the early stages of the year, gamers are looking to spend big once again as we look forward to the release of highly anticipated titles like Hogwarts Legacy, Starfield and Forespoken.
Isa Muhammad is a writer and video game journalist covering many aspects of entertainment media including the film industry. He's steadily writing his way to the sharp end of journalism and enjoys staying informed. If he's not reading, playing video games or catching up on his favourite TV series, then he's probably writing about them.
