The United States video game sales for 2018 broke records across the board. The sales were more than $43 billion in total across the entire industry. Everything from hardware sales to software sales was up over sales in 2017. This is all great news for the entire industry as we head into what looks to be another crazy busy year for gaming all over the world.
We have these statistics based on a press release sent out by the ESA (Entertainment Software Association), best known for hosting E3 every year, and the NPD Group. The NPD Group offers data to businesses all across the world. Both groups released data for revenue across the video game industry for last year. Note that is only for the United States not North America as a whole.
In total, the revenue for the video game industry is $43.4 billion for 2018. This breaks down into two main categories: hardware sales and software sales. Hardware sales, including peripherals, sold for a total of $7.5 billion. This category includes stuff like the various consoles, presumably VR hardware sales, and other peripherals that are related to the gaming industry.
This is a growth of 15 percent over the hardware sales in 2017. Of course, that is only around a sixth of the entire revenue of video game sales. That’s because the rest is made up of software sales. Software sales for 2018 was a total of $35.8 billion. It’s worth noting that this includes other types of sales like in-game purchases and subscriptions.
Software sales also grew over 2017. The video game sales grew 18 percent over the software sales in 2017. This, altogether, adds up a total of 18 percent growth over everything from software to hardware from 2017 to 2018. This is a great sign of things to come, as 2019 looks to be just as big, if not bigger than last year.