The video game industry racked up impressive sales in 2008, pulling in more than $21 billion in sales in the United States alone. That make for a similarly impressive marketing tab.
According to researchers at the Nielsen Company and its Monitor-Plus advertising monitoring service, the industry spent an astounding $823 million promoting its video game wares to consumers. Hey, you gotta spend money to make money, right? Surely we wouldn't complain.
Nielsen and business intelligence and research firm EEDAR announced alongside their findings their intentions to "provide detailed analysis of historical marketing campaigns in the video game industry" as part of a long term agreement.
That means we'll probably have solid data on whether the industry will spend the better part of a billion dollars on marketing and promotion this year, something we'd be surprised to see in the lagging economy.
That $823 million may seem like a lot, but it's less than 4% of the industry's total revenue for 2008. And considering how much Rockstar Games and Valve spent last year promoting Grand Theft Auto IV and Left 4 Dead, we're wondering how the rest managed to get by.