US: Pre-owned, digital grabs 1/3 of market

New research from US stats body The NPD Group claims that in 2009 US consumers spent a total of $4.5-4.75bn on pre-owned games, game rentals, subscriptions, digitally downloaded games, DLC and mobile apps.

That’s around a third of the estimated $15bn US spend on video games last year. The numbers do not include any additional spend on social games such as Farmville, Gamasutra reports.

Our expanded estimate of consumer spending reflects the growing number of options to purchase, acquire and interact with video games ranging from GameFly rentals to iPod Touch game apps,” NPD analyst Anita Frazier explained.

Consumer spending on social network games like those offered by Facebook would push this estimate even higher.”