NPD report: First half of PC games online sales of ultra retail stores

More games in Beijing September 21 Morning news, according to foreign media reports, market research company NPD Group released a report in Monday, the first 6 months of this year, consumers bought online more PC game than in the retail stores. The report shows that in the first 6 months of this year, U.S. consumers bought and downloaded 11.2 million digital games online, while at the same time in the retail stores only 8.2 million of the physical game.　　Although the number of downloads was more than the real game in the first half of the game, it accounted for only 43% of total game revenue, according to NPD, mainly because of the higher prices of games in retail stores. The report also shows that whether consumers buy games from the Internet or from a retail store, their spending on the game is decreasing, as is the number of games purchased.　　The first half of the year's digital games and real-game revenues fell 21% per cent year-on-year, with sales falling 14% from a year earlier, according to NPD. Anita Frazier, NPD analyst Anita Fratz, said: "The overall decline in digital downloads and physical retail PC game sales is due to increased social-networking games and free gaming." "To compile this data, NPD surveys individual consumers and tracks sales data from specific network retailers."　　NPD divides online retailers into two categories, the "Frontline digital retailer", which sells famous games that can be seen in retail outlets, and "casual digital retailers" that offer small games to buy first. Of the "frontline digital retailers" tracked by NPD, the top five were steamgames.com, direct2drive.com, ea.com, worldofwarcraft.com and blizzard.com; "Leisure digital retailer"　　The top five were bigfishgames.com, gamehouse.com, iwin.com, pogo.com and wildtangent.com respectively. "One of the major findings from this latest report is that the first half of the year was bigger," says Fratz. Compared with the same period last year, steamgames.com and bigfishgames.com have gained greater market share in the field of PC game digital download sales. "(Edit/Zhang Xing)