Total U.S. consumer videogame spending is expected to reach nearly $25 billion for 2010, according to a report by market research company Newzoo (via Gamasutra).
This year's $24.7 billion estimate takes into account sales across all platforms, including microtransactions from DLC, MMOs, and social networks. For whatever reason, the only major segment of the market that's being ignored here is hardware sales. Newzoo's report indicates that overall spending dropped 2 percent compared to last year's numbers. At least part of that decline would appear to be due to weaker sales of console games, which slowed to $10.6 billion in 2010. That's about 29 percent less than 2009's total. Boxed copies of PC and Mac titles saw a similar plunge in sales, falling 19 percent year-over-year to $2.1 billion. On the plus side, sales of downloadable PC and Mac games jumped to $2.5 billion -- 60 percent higher than the figures for 2009. In fact, despite the slight drop in overall spending, 2010 has been a year for tremendous growth in a lot of market segments. Social network gaming picking up the single largest increase over the prior year's numbers, growing 66 percent in 2010. Casual gaming portals, MMOs, and mobile devices also outperformed their respective sales for 2009, with each category putting up double-digit percentage increases over last year's spending figures.
