Yet those sales haven't been enough to keep the industry from going negative a majority of the last 18 months in part to steep drop-off in software sales for older hardware and lackluster interest in new games.
This time around, however, hardware fell 4 percent to $184 million, while software jumped 10 percent to $264.4 million in April, NPD reports. (Hardware sales are still cumulatively 50 percent higher than the previous generation of game consoles.)
"Part of the reason for the software growth was due to April 2015 launches having 50 percent higher sales than launches in April 2014," said NPD analyst Liam Callahan. April saw the release of fighting game Mortal Kombat X, which took the No. 1 software spot followed up by open-world crime title Grand Theft Auto V and the cops vs. robbers shooter, Battlefield Hardline.
Though retail is rebounding from a consistent string of interchanging slips in hardware and software sales, the inevitable shift to sales over the Internet still looms large.
The video game industry, like music and television before it, is moving away from selling a physical disc, placed in a box and wrapped in plastic. Instead, game makers are seeing sales shift to the Internet, where players connect their credit cards to online marketplaces like Sony's PlayStation Store, Apple's App Store and Valve's Steam marketplace. There, you can buy full games outright or spend money incrementally on titles that are increasingly being designed to last months to years thanks to supplemental add-ons.
Sales of full games downloaded over the Internet and game adds-on like additional storylines or, in the case with mobile games, in-app purchases hit $1.1 billion in April, up more than 15 percent from this time a year ago, according to SuperData Research.
In their respective quarterly earnings reports earlier this month, big-name game makers Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard yet again reiterated the industry's commitment to shift to sales over the Internet.
Of EA's $4.3 billion in sales last year, after some accounting adjustments, a record $2.2 billion came from Internet sales of both full games and add-ons. Sales from EA's growing library of titles for smartphones and tablets also hit a new record, ringing up $524 million for the year. Activision said a record 76 percent, or $538 million, of its total revenue came from sales over the Internet of full-game downloads and in-game adds-ons.
http://www.cnet.com/news/new-playstation-xbox-games-breathing-life-into-games-industry/
