United States: NPD report about micro-transactions, DLC

Recently, the NPD shared a report about micro-transactions and DLC in the United States, with some pretty interesting findings. The first one is maybe the most impressive: 28% of the US population have purchased additional content in the past three months. That’s 28% of all people aged 13 to 54, not just people who play video games on a regular basis.

As far as micro-transactions go, it was revealed that:

• 37% of purchasers of in-game currency did so to have fun;
• 8% did so to save time (though one could argue that saving time allows one to have potentially more fun with a game, especially if it means bypassing the usual timer restrictions in Free 2 Play games)

It was also revealed that 31% of the items bought via micro-transactions were weapons/tools, and 28% were power-ups.

Next: DLC. The most popular type of DLC is obviously expansion packs, as 55% of DLC purchasers ended up buying that (as opposed to additional costumes and the likes).

The NPD’s study shows that males and teens are the most likely to purchase additional content for a game. Finally, according to their data, “gamers” spent on average $53 in DLC in the past 3 months, as opposed to $64 for “heavy gamers” (who play more than 10 hours per week). Not too surprising that people who are more “engaged” in their games would end up spending more on them.

Source: NPD