Global lockdowns push video game sales to all-time highs in March
While the bricks & mortar part of the entertainment industry suffered heavily under worldwide lockdowns, video gaming posted a surge as more and more people started spending more time online.
According to data collected by GoldenCasinoNews, in the week from 16 to 22 March, global video game sales jumped 63%, with a total of 4.3 million games sold worldwide. At the same time, like-for-like game sales rose by 44% globally.
During the same week, global console games increased by a massive 155%, according to the data.
The Superdata survey also showed that global premium console spending hit US$1.5 billion in March, the highest ever.
With an 82% jump in week-on-week sales, physical games ranked as the second most wanted type of video game in March. In the tracked March week (16 to 22), nearly 1.6 million titles were sold across the world. This increase was partially due to the release of new titles like Animal Crossing: New Horizons and DOOM: Eternal. However, even without the latest titles, physical game sales still increased by 10.8% compared to the previous week.
Again for the same week, the stats further show that digital games recorded a 52.9% increase in week-on-week sales with more than 2.7 million games downloaded across 50 markets. Moreover, Superdata figures revealed that global digital games hit US$10 billion in March, the highest monthly revenue ever.
Not only did players spend more on a larger variety, the time they spent playing also increased substantially. Leading the world is the United States where game time increased by another record-breaking 45%. Over in Europe, growth was somewhat less but still staggering ranging between 20% and 38% for individual countries.
