US consumers of those newfangled video games apparently spent $25.3 billion on them in 2009, according to the Today's Gamers Survey by Newzoo and TNS. If this study seems vaguely familiar, it's likely because there was a similar report released on massively multiplayer games a couple months ago, which found that Americans spent $3.8 billion on MMOs during 2009. Typically, data we see comes from retailers, but this survey was conducted using 13,000 respondents, aged 8 and up, who were "carefully selected to represent each individual country's demographic profile."

As VentureBeat notes, the numbers in the Newzoo report are quite different than NPD's report on 2009 sales -- by about $5 billion. Unlike NPD, the Newzoo study also reports data on several European nations. A free summary [PDF link] of the report is available on GamesIndustry.com, while the full report will cost you €299 ($384). We wonder how much US consumers spent on research reports in 2009 ...

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/05/10/st...games-in-2009/