NPD sizes up digital distribution market

While the industry-tracking NPD Group keeps close tabs on US retail sales in the game industry, it has for years struggled with quantifying the growing realm of digital distribution. Concrete information about the sales of digitally distributed titles is still the closely held secret of vendors like Steam, Xbox Live Marketplace, PlayStation Store, and the Wii Shop Channel, but the NPD Group is trying to find another way to gauge the market's size.

Today the research firm revealed select figures from its quarterly survey of more than 8,000 gamers, including its determination that nine out of 10 "paid console video game acquisitions" for July-September 2009 were in a physical format. That includes purchases of full games (both new and used), add-on packs, expansions, and game rentals, be they from the local Blockbuster or from mail-order services like Gamefly.

An NPD representative told GameSpot that rentals accounted for 5 percent of all console content acquisitions and just 1 percent of non-console acquisitions (handhelds, PC, Mac, mobile, and smartphones). On those systems, the NPD Group found that physical formats accounted for 79 percent of all content acquisitions.

The survey also yielded a handful of other discoveries about the downloadable market. Those who buy games in a mix of physical and digital formats represent just 19 percent of the market in terms of headcount, but are responsible for 40 percent of the money spent on games, according to NPD figures.

The research firm also painted piracy as a relatively limited part of the industry when compared to music. Although the NPD Group's definition of piracy was inexact (it equated downloading files from peer-to-peer networks with piracy), the survey found some 4 percent of respondents to be involved in pirating games. Of the titles pirated, 72 percent were made for the PC and Mac.