According to NPD, new retail game sales were $10.5 billion in 2009. If you add used video games, rentals, subscriptions, digital game downloads, DLC, and mobile games, there is an additional $4.5 – $4.75 billion in sales.

According to NPD, October saw the following hardware sales in the U.S.:

Wii – 507,000 units

PlayStation 3 (PS3) – 321,00 units

Xbox 360 – 250,000 units

We would expect all of these numbers to rise for the holidays. While Wii is selling pretty well, the deep discounting retailers are putting on bundles, including $300 configurations for PS3 and 360 will push those platforms for the holidays. Also, given the fact that the $300 price point was where the PS2  really took off as a DVD player that also played games a decade ago, the Blu-ray capabilities of the PS3 are now priced at a mainstream consumer price where we should see adoption increase. It’s not a cheap Blu-ray system and will likely benefit from Blu-ray movie discounting this holiday season, as well as inexpensive HDTVs.

According to NPD, impulse buyers are paying less for games, meaning lower prices are spurring software sales.

• 40% of video game buyers have purchased a game on impulse in the past 6 months
• Impulse shoppers in the industry are
• 26% of impulse shoppers are age 13 – 17
• 23% of impulse shoppers are age 35 – 44
• The average price of impulse purchases is $27.19
• The average price of planned purchases is $42.97
• 1/3 of gamers have bought a used game in the past 6 months
• 10% gamers say they would never buy a used game
• Only 3% of reported purchases were pre-ordered
• 46 % of impulse buyers are females
• 37 % of planned buyers are females
• Almost 20% of gamers bought a game that was a sequel to one they had enjoyed
• 43% of impulse buyers paid only $10 – $20 for their last game
• Only 15% of impulse purchases were made online

GameSpot reported that NPD has released its 2009 Gamer Segmentation Report on the US games market. Key points include:

• Half of all Americans play games
  
• There are 32.9 Million US Console Gamers
  
• Extreme Gamers play games nearly 40 hours per week
  
• The number of gamers increased from 165.5 million to 169.9 million
  
• 55% of Americans play games in one form or another
  
• PC is the primary gaming platform for 67.3 million Americans
  
• 25.9 million people are Online PC Gamers
  
• Online PC Gamers (or what would be considered Casual Gamers) are mostly female and spend 73% of their 8 hours a week playing games online
  
• 17.3 million Avid PC Gamers play 23 hours a week
  
• 24.1 million Offline PC Gamers spend 82% of their time playing offline

Gamasutra has coverage of a new NPD survey that shows women now make up 28% of the console gaming audience. Other data points include:

According to the NPD Group, The percentage of Americans who over the last six months have:

NPD Group, GfK Chart-Track Limited and Enterbrain, Inc., combined video game software unit sales across the world’s three largest games markets:

GameIndustry Biz reported today that an analysis of the NPD numbers gives the following breakdowns of Per Unit Sales:

• Total third party sales for the Xbox 360 since launch is currently 67,929,999 units, followed by the Wii at 33,394,311 units and the PlayStation 3 at 19,976,325 units.
• Third party sales for the Xbox 360 since the launch of the Wii and PS3 is 54,065,728 units, still almost double the Wii’s 33,394,311 units.
• If you take the total number of units sold and divide that by the number of titles released since November 2006, the Xbox 360 and the PS3 are selling more units per title on average than the Wii. This puts the Xbox 360 at 217,252 units per title, the PS3 at 156,065 units and the Wii at 132,517 units.

The San Jose Mercury News reports that:

• 27% of new US console sales are being sold to households that do not currently own a game console
• By the end of 2008, 44% of US households will own a console, up from 37% in 2007
• NPD is estimating the market at $21 Billion to $23 Billion in 2008 which represents 16.6%-27.7% growth over 2007
• 25 Million consoles have been sold in the US in the past 2 1/2 years