The NPD Group has reported US consumers spend $19.5 billion on video game products in the first six months of the year.
This marks an increase of 40 per cent when compared to spending across January to June 2017, with strong growth seen in hardware sales. In fact, first-half spending on hardware was the highest in seven years, rising 21 per cent year-on-year to $1.7 billion.
The NPD highlighted particularly strong sales for Xbox One as well as plug and play devices such as Nintendo's NES and SNES Classic Editions - something that has been a running trend in the firm's recent monthly reports. NES Classic was actually the biggest selling device in June.
However, the majority of revenue still goes on the games themselves. Spending on video games content - which includes full game sales, subscriptions, DLC and microtransactions across PC, console and mobile - rose by 43 per cent year-on-year to $16.9 billion.

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