The results are in, and video games made a lot of money in 2015. Seriously. I’m sure it doesn’t come as a surprise, since a new record for sales seems to be set with each consecutive release of major franchises. How much money did they make last year exactly? Somewhere in the ballpark of $23.5 billion, according to the Entertainment Software Asssociation, the trade asssociation that presents E3 every year.
More than half of that is software sales alone, coming in at $16.5 billion. That’s a 7% increase over last year’s total of $15.4 billion. Seems like healthy growth! Video games don’t seem to be going anywhere in the near future. Now we’ll just see if 2016 can top it. Seems pretty like if you ask me, and the president of NPD thinks so, too.
“The ubiquitous nature of playing and purchasing video games makes it more important than ever to track these activities accurately,” said Joanne Hageman, president at the NPD Group. “The industry’s sales performance helped to make 2015 a banner year for video games; and we anticipate continued growth in multiple industry sectors for 2016.”