Q3 Spending On Video Games Reach $10 Billion

US consumers have reportedly spent close to $10 billion on video gaming in the third quarter of 2019, representing an increase of 1% compared to last year, revealing just how much the industry continues to grow year on year.

It comes following a report from the NPD Group that revealed overall total industry consumer spending on video gaming in the US reached $9.18 billion in the third quarter of 2019, with total consumer spending between January and September increasing by 1% to $27.9 billion.

Video game content sales reached $8.1 billion in Q3, an increase of 3% from last year, representing a yearly content spending increase of 3% to $24.7 billion.

Mat Piscatella, games industry analyst at The NPD Group identifies spending across mobile and subscription services such as those found in Candy Crush Saga or Fortnite, respectively, as being a driving factor for growth in the video games market.

‘Growth in digital content spending on consoles has also been remarkable.’

The best performing titles of the third quarter according to the report included Borderlands 3, Candy Crush Saga, Fortnite, Grand Theft Auto V, Madden NFL 20, Minecraft, NBA 2K20, and Pokémon Go.

According to Mat, factors like live service games that are building consistent engagement ties with consumers have allowed the industry to teach growth.

Unfortunately, the same level growth was not present within the hardware market, where despite strong sales for Nintendo Switch hardware, a fall of 22% to $575 million could not be offset.

Yearly sales for video game hardware have declined by 23% to $1.9 billion.

Curiously enough, peripheral gaming sales, like gamepads, headsets, cases and other accessories, also dropped off by 3% to $390 million this quarter.

This could perhaps be due in part to saturation of gaming accessories in the market, with the likes of Razer flooding the market with product after product.

Year-to-date spending on accessories also fell 3 % to $1.3 billion, however despite the drop, video game accessory spending has reached its third-highest total in history.