NPD: Video game statistics from Microsoft's Gamefest

by Blake Snow @ on Aug 15th 2006 6:55PM

Firing Squad has posted several game related sales figures and statistics reported by The NPD Group during Microsoft's Gamefest panel discussion today. Some notable highlights from the article:

As has been the case for some time, sales for games in the fourth quarter of the year (Oct-Dec) represent nearly half of all the year's sales for software.
Currently, only 33 percent of 13-44 year olds play games online. 75 percent of those gamers play on the PC platform.
83.6 percent of 360 players are playing online, compared to just 51.3 percent for PS2 and 55.4 percent for Xbox.
92 percent of games sold in the US still happen at retail brick and mortar stores; Wal-Mart, Gamestop/EBGames, Best Buy and Target sell 74 percent of all games in the US.
Males still dominate games sales but the NPD Group numbers show that females seems to gravitate more to Nintento consoles (GBA, Gamecube, and DS) than to PS2, PC Xbox, and Xbox 360 platforms.
Action games are currently the most popular genre of games at 23.3 percent of total sales, Sports is second with 15.9 percent of sales, followed by 12.7 percent for role playing games and 12.4 percent for first person shooters.
The NPD Group: The success of any console system is ultimately up to the content that is provided for those systems (gasps in disbelief).
Retailers have been cutting down on shelf space for PC games simply because they were not selling.

[Thanks, John]