NPD expanding Total Consumer Spend report to Europe, Asia

The NPD Group is largely known among gamer circles as the industry-standard stat-tracking company for US game retail sales. However, more recently, NPD has expanded its coverage of the US game industry to include the growing prevalence of dollars going to other channels, such as used games, subscriptions, and downloadable content. Today, the firm announced that it will soon be offering a similar service in Europe and Asia.

An extension of its quarterly Games Industry: Total Consumer Spend, the NPD's new report will provide sales estimates "across all video game channels and media, including new physical formats sold at retail, social network gaming, used video games, rentals, subscriptions, digital downloads, downloadable content, and mobile games."

NPD's initial report for Europe will cover gaming markets in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, and its focus will be on channels not currently measured by other stat-tracking firms in those regions. This report will track sales during the October-December quarter. NPD also noted that it will begin tracking Asian markets in a similar way sometime thereafter.

In NPD's most recent Total Consumer Spend report for the US market, the firm found that gamers spent a total of $5.9 billion on software in its various forms during the January-March quarter. That figure is up 1.5 percent year-over-year.