The Canadian video game sector generated another year of record sales in 2006 with all three segments, including hardware, software and accessories, experiencing growth.
According to The NPD Group, hardware sales, as represented by consoles and handhelds, reached $349 million in 2006, which is an annual increase of 43 per cent. Software was up 10 per cent or over $480 million in sales and accessories generated $104 million, a 24 per cent year-over-year jump.
Canadians purchased a record number of video game consoles and handheld systems in 2006 with Playstation 2 leading the market followed by XBox 360. The Gamecube was third with Nintendo’s Wii and Sony’s Playstation 3 coming in fourth and fifth respectively. However, the latter two consoles were on the market for a mere two months compared to the full year experienced by the other systems.
Portable or handheld system unit sales saw an increase of 22 per cent with slightly fewer than 787,000 purchased in 2006. Nintendo’s DS system lead the market followed by the Nintendo GameBoy Advance system and Sony’s Playstation Portable system.
Concerning software, not only did sales increase in 2006 there was also a record number of titles introduced onto the market. According to the NPD Group, 924 titles were launched, which represents a nine per cent annual increase (titles across multiple platforms count as individual titles. For example, EA’s NHL’07 was introduced across systems representing a total of four titles).
