2004 Game Sales Set New Record

According to new figures released by the Entertainment Software Association, data collected by the NPD Group indicates that the total videogame software sales across all platforms, including consoles, handhelds, and the PC, reached $7.3 billion in 2004. The total is a new record for the games industry, surpassing the overall performance of just over $7 billion in 2003. Although overall NPD figures have been previously reported, this new information broke the survey totals down by type. In particular, console game sales brought in $5.2 billion with 160.7 million units sold; computer game sales brought in $1.1 billion with 45 million units sold; and handheld game sales accounted for the remaining $1 billion with 42.3 million units. Broken down by genre, action games were in the lead with 30.1% of sales, followed by sports (17.8%), shooters (9.6%), family entertainment (9.5%), racing (9.4%), RPGs (9%), and fighting games (5.4%). The ESA also pointed out that only 16% of all titles purchased in 2004 carried the Mature rating, and that the overwhelming majority of games sold were rated either Everyone (53%) or Teen (30%). Furthermore, 15 of the top 20 games in 2004 were rated either Everyone or Teen by the ESRB.