Sales & Genre Data
According to data compiled by the NPD Group, a global market research company, and released by the ESA in January 2008, computer and video game companies posted records sales in 2007. The industry sold 267.8 million units, leading to an astounding $9.5 billion in revenue. Of these sales:
- Game console software sales totaled $6.6 billion with 153.9 million units sold;
- Computer games sales were $910.7 million with 36.4 million units sold; and,
- There was a record $2.0 billion in portable software sales with 77.5 million units sold.
NPD's research also showed:
- On average, nine games were sold every second of every day of 2007;
- Halo 3, the best-selling title of 2007, took in more revenue in its first day of sales than the biggest opening weekend ever for a movie ("Spider-Man 3") and the final "Harry Potter" book's first day sales; and,
- The entertainment software industry sold over 13.4 million portable game units in 2007, easily trumping the much-hyped Apple iPhone, which sold just four million units.
The genre with the greatest growth was "Family Entertainment," which grew 110 percent over the previous year. Family games accounted to 17.2 percent of all games sold in 2007, more than one of every six games sold, up from 9.1 percent in 2006. In addition, of the games sold in 2007, 56.6 percent were rated "Early Childhood (EC)," "Everyone (E)" and "Everyone 10+ (E10+)." The NPD Group's data also indicates that only 15 percent of games sold last year were rated "Mature (M)."
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