BERLIN, April 11 (Xinhua) -- Sales on the German gaming market grew by 17 percent year-on-year in 2021 to a new record of 9.8 billion euros (10.7 billion U.S. dollars), the German Games Industry Association (game) said on Monday.
Already in the first pandemic year 2020, gaming software, online services and hardware had generated 32 percent more revenues than in the previous year, according to the gaming association.
Germany's gaming market continued a "strong performance with significant growth in 2021," said Felix Falk, Managing Director of game. "This also demonstrates that the people who first took up playing during the lockdowns are still enjoying it."
In-game and in-app purchases made the biggest contribution to growing revenues, with an increase of 30 percent to 4.2 billion euros last year. By contrast, one-off purchases of games fell by 9 percent to around 1.1 billion euros.
Although the latest models of Xbox and PlayStation were frequently sold out due to global chip shortages, sales of game consoles in Germany rose by 23 percent to 808 million euros. Overall sales of gaming hardware rose by 18 percent to around 3.6 billion euros. (1 euro = 1.09 U.S. dollars) ■