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Americans will spend $20.5B on games in 2013, with 65% of that via digital channels

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

Americans will spend $20.5 billion on games this year, with about 65 percent of that amount spend via digital means through online downloads for consoles, PCs, smartphones, and tablets.

About 31 percent of the business, or $6.4 billion, flows through retail sales of boxed games, according to Amsterdam-based market researcher Newzoo. (These numbers don’t include sales of hardware). About 13.3 billion of the revenue is generated through digital means.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.