NZers spend $149 million on retail games in 2012

New Zealanders spent $149 million on video games at retail in 2012, down 18% year-on-year, according to report from the NPD Group.

Actual unit sales were down only 7%. On the HD consoles - Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii U - 3.4% more units were sold in 2012 than in 2011, but the cost of games decreased by an avergae of 8.6%.

The revenue from all retail games - including PC figures and non-HD console software such as Wii games - was down 14.5%.

The figures exclude mobile games and games bought digitally over services like Steam and the Xbox Marketplace. It also does not include in-game microtransactions or game subscriptions.

"“As New Zealanders play video games across a broader range of mediums, it’s becoming difficult to get a true indication of the value of the industry via a single source," said the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association's Mark Goodacre. "While there is a decline in traditional sales, the gaming industry as a whole remains buoyant, as people shift towards a ‘hybrid’ model in their consumption of interactive entertainment."

Goodacre said that the drop in physical sales was also partly due to consoles coming to the end of their life cycles, a trend iGEA had seen back in 2005 before the release of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Market research firm PriceWaterhouseCooper also released a report predicting that video games sales will demonstrate the second-biggest growth in consumer spending over the next four years.

While it is hard to say whether spending on digital games has offet physical sales, Kiwi companies who sell through digital-only means have had a good year, said the chair of the New Zealand Game Developers Association.

"Recent hit New Zealand video games like Path of Exile, The Blockheads and Bloons Tower Defence 5, each sold millions of copies digitally. For exporters like us, we go direct to our players via the internet," Stephen Knightly said.