Recent data released by the NPD Group suggest online gaming subscriptions in the U.S. turn in over US$ 1 billion a year. Worldwide phenomenon World of Warcraft and popular website Pogo.com help boost the industry's revenue. See the full article for details.

The NPD group has announced that it will be compiling reports on online game subscriptions for paying customers of the service. The company is already known for its North American video game industry software and hardware sales reports so this new service will probably delight business owners and analysts in the online gaming industry. For more on this, be sure to head on over to the full article.

The NPD Group recently released the top ten bestselling games on the PC. They've updated this list as it seems they made a mistake. Much of the list's original contenders are still there, albeit not in the same places as the original list. Check out the corrected list in the full article.

National Purchase Diary or NPD has released the top ten bestselling games for the week of June 2 and the results may surprise you. While the market research firm has had its share of criticisms from other industry analysts, a lot of people still turn to them for the latest sales figures.

The top two slots were claimed by World of Warcraft and World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade respectively. It seems that no amount of Wife/Girlfriend/Parent aggro can stop this juggernaut.

Furthermore, casual gamers have claimed the third slot with Sims 2 Seasons as it even outsold Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars which nabbed fourth and Halo 2 ending only on fifth place.

Check out the complete list to see if any of your favorite games managed to grab a slot.

Top Ten Games for the week of June 2:

1. World Of Warcraft - Blizzard
2. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade - Blizzard
3. The Sims 2 Seasons - Electronic Arts
4. Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars - Electronic Arts
5. Halo 2 - Microsoft
6. The Sims 2 Celebration Stuff - Electronic Arts
7. Civilization IV - 2K Games
8. The Sims 2 Deluxe - Electronic Arts
9. Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows Of Angmar - Turbine/Midway
10. Half-Life 2: Episode 1 - Valve/Electronic Arts

With all the recent releases of video games, it appears that the established IPs are still dominating the charts. When will we be seeing more new IPs join the list? Be sure to keep checking back here for the latest development on QJ.NET.

In a recently conducted study by the NDP Group, it has been discovered that 62% of gamers in North America play their games online. A good 42% of those gamers are women, while majority of the 11,600 surveyed were found to be between the ages of 25-44 years old.

Gamers on the Xbox 360 accounted for the huge rise in online gaming with the PlayStation 2 on second, although the PlayStation 3 is the second most used platform for online play.

That, however, was ironically offset by the many Nintendo Wii gamers who were found to be the "most inclined" to become online gamers, but didn't have the means to do so.

In contrast, the PC and Mac audiences in the North American side only accounted for the top three platforms played online, despite their already-established online play infrastructure and technology. It is yet unclear if these results also reflect the MMO gaming platforms.

In other findings, it was discovered that the most popular genres played in the U.S. were casual games. Raking in 44% of the gamer surveyed, it even offset family-oriented (25%) and MMOs (19%). 41% of those surveyed were classified under "Avid PC Gamers," making it the largest segment of online gamers surveyed.

PC gamer sales are currently having a resurgence in the U.S., and one of the reasons behind it is the steadily growing popularity of MMORPGS. In particular, Blizzard's World of Warcraft.

New York Times reports that according to an analyst from the NPD Group, U.S. retailers sold US$ 203 million worth of PC games in the first two months of 2007. NPD's Anita Frazier said that sales in the same period last year peaked at US$ 136.8 million.

According to Frazier, sales of RPG titles were 43 percent higher than in the first two months of 2006, and the release of The Burning Crusade in January is likely to have accounted for a great deal of these sales. "The robust performance we're seeing in PC game sales can be tied to several key titles across several genres," said Frazier. "But we'd be remiss not to address the continued success of World of Warcraft."

 

Just how much is a billion dollars? If you had a billion one dollar bills and counted each one, at the rate of a dollar per second, it would take you 30 years to complete the task! That's the kind of counting PC game makers face for selling, well, almost a billion dollars worth of games in 2006. According to the NPD Group, the exact figure is US$ 970 million - which may not be a billion but it's pretty darn close.

Leading the pack of  the hottest PC game last year is Blizzard's World of Warcraft which sold 969,000 units. In second place is The Sims 2 from EA which moved 598,000 units. However, the The Sims franchise dominated the list with five titles in the top 10.

Since we're in the realm of the big numbers, we might as well give you NPD's total PC video game hardware, software and accessories sales digits in 2006: US $13.5 billion.

And here's the rest of the top ten best-selling games of 2006 according to NPD:

1. World of Warcraft (VU Games)
2. The Sims 2 (EA)
3. The Sims 2: Open for Business (EA)
4. Star Wars: Empire at War (LucasArts)
5. The Sims 2: Pets (EA)
6. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Take 2)
7. Age of Empires III (Microsoft)
8. The Sims 2 Family Fun (EA)
9. Civilisation IV (Take 2)
10. The Sims 2 Nightlife (EA)

Don't be surprised if the people who beats you on online games seem to be getting younger and younger these days--because they really are!

The younger you are, the more chances that you're a gamer. According to the latest NPD Group Study, 45% of "Heavy Gamers" and 1/3 of "Avid Console Gamers" are between the ages of 6-17 debunking the assumption that most hardcore players are within the 18-34 age bracket. Regarding the Gaming Handhelds 1 in 3 are aged 18 to 44. In short, there are more younger hardcore players than thought of initially.

There were other surprising results gathered from the survey. The ladies have begun to play harder - 21% of the mentioned "Heavy Gamers" are females. This supports the report by Nintendo last GC, stating that 44% of the NDS sales came from the women side. It used to be "Hide all the women and children," now it's "Where's my little girl? She'll beat this big boss in minutes."

So should game developers and retailers focus mainly on the heavy gamers? According to Anita Frazier, they shouldn't as there are more broader and larger consumer base than the Heavy Gamers. Whatever your age, sex, or race is... just keep on playing.