U.S. gamers play more, spend less
PHYSICAL: Used-game sales expected to continue climb
By Danny King -- Video Business, 7/6/2009
JULY 6 | PHYSICAL: Videogame players are spending more time at their consoles but spending less money on new titles, suggesting that used-game sales will continue to increase at the expense of new-games revenue, according to a Nielsen report released today.
For the six months ended May, the typical gamer bought 3.51 used games, up 17% from the number of used games bought during the six months ended January, Nielsen said in its report. During the same time period, new-game purchases over a six-month period fell about 6% to 9.75 games, the research firm said.
Consumers are buying more used games as a way to support a growing gaming habit amid the economic downturn. In May, the typical gamer spent about 16.5 hours on a console, up about 3% from a year earlier and about 15% more than in May 2006, according to Nielsen, which polled about 2,400 gamers over more than three years.
“This spike in used-game purchasing has come ahead of the summer months, when used as a share of the total games purchased tends to climb historically,” Nielsen said in the report. “It will be interesting to follow this in the coming months.”
Such habits have helped retailers such as GameStop boost earnings amid flattening videogame industry revenue by increasing used-game sales, while luring companies such as Best Buy and Amazon.com into the used-games market. In May, U.S. revenue from videogame hardware and software dropped 23% from a year earlier to $863.3 million, marking the first time monthly industry revenue was less than $1 billion in almost two years, NPD Group said last month. However, that does not include sales of used games.
Meanwhile, Best Buy said last month it would start testing self-service kiosks that allow for videogame trade-ins at some of its Texas stores, indicating that the largest U.S. electronics chain might be looking to challenge specialty videogame retailer GameStop. That company in May reported a 13% increase in fiscal first-quarter earnings after more higher-margin used-games sales offset the effect of lower same-store revenue.
