Sales of interactive entertainment games reached $392 million in New Zealand for the year 2015, the Interactive Games & Entertainment Association (IGEA) has announced.
It's a 13 percent increase on 2014, broken down into increases of 4.5 percent in traditional retail sales ($136 million) and 18 percent in digital sales $256 million).
"The robust growth of New Zealand's videogames industry is testament to a strong gaming culture," says Ron Curry, CEO of IGEA.
"Research shows that New Zealanders are keen on early access to games, with one-in-four buyers willing to pay in advance to play a game before the official release date. While there is no doubt that there has been diversification in the games market, retail sales were also strong."
The $392 million sales figure is comprised of hardware, packaged games, subscriptions, digital sales and mobile games.
IGEA commissioned analyst firm Telsyte to perform additional research into the digital games market, which found the popularity of the current generation consoles had led to increased digital game downloads in 2015. Similarly, PC game downloads also increased while mobile games continued to make up the largest portion of digital games sales.
The increased growth across the bulk of sectors, most notably within console and mobile gaming, offset a slowdown in areas such as hardcopy PC games, Telsyte's research found.
"The New Zealand interactive games industry continues to flourish on all fronts, cementing itself as a key segment of the entertainment industry," says Foad Fadaghi, managing director of Telsyte.
"New Zealanders' appetite for digital downloads of full games has grown strongly and is set to make up around a third of all games sales by 2016."
Newshub.
