The Video Game Industry Is up 13 Percent From Last Year

As it does each month, the industry-tracking firm, The NPD Group, released video game sales numbers for the month of May.

These numbers include software title sales, which you can read about here, hardware sales and accessories, too. The NPD Group also reported that overall, the video game industry is up 13 percent from last year. In May of 2017, the industry generated $607 million. This year, that number is $685 million. This increase is in part due to hardware and accessory sales, and certainly not software sales, as those were down 4 percent from last year.

In total, hardware sales contributed to $186 million of May’s overall $685 million. Hardware sales are up 26 percent from last May’s $147 million. Accessories make up $225 million of May’s numbers, and they’re up 30 percent from last year–last May, accessories brought in $174 million.

Compared to 2017, 2018 is up 15 percent in terms of year-to-date dollar sales with a total of $4.923 billion. In 2017, that number was $4.288 billion. Hardware is up 15 percent as well with a total of $1.336 billion–last year, this number was $1.159 billion. Finally, accessories are up $1.421 billion, a 29 percent increase from 2017’s $1.101 billion, in year-to-date dollar sales.

The PS4 continued its long-running streak as the best-selling console year-to-date, but that doesn’t mean the other consoles performed poorly by any means.

“Sony’s PlayStation 4, Microsoft’s Xbox One and Nintendo Switch all achieved all-time unit sales highs for a May month,” NPD analyst Mat Piscatella told VentureBeat. “Previous highs were May 2016 for PlayStation 4, May 2015 for Xbox One, and May 2017 for Switch.”

Hardware isn’t alone, though–accessory numbers are way up too.

“Year-to-date sales of both headsets and gamepads have achieved all-time record highs. The previous year-to-date high spending for headsets occurred in 2011, gamepads 2016,” Piscatella told VentureBeat. “Sales of headsets/headphones more than doubled in May 2018 when compared to a year ago. Year-to-date, headsets/headphones spending has increased 83 percent.”

Controllers, which are technically considered accessories, sold more as well. Year-over-year, controllers are up 16 percent while year-to-date, they’re up 22 percent. The PS4 controller continues to be the best-selling gamepad.