Yesterday I mentioned the growth of video games as big business, possibly surpassing that of the movie industry worldwide. Today the ISANZ (Interactive Software Association of New Zealand) released statistics regarding exactly how much growth the industry has had in New Zealand. Despite the gloomy economic slump our economy seems to be in, things don’t look to be slowing down for the gaming industry and in fact, the ISANZ reported a growth of 12% since 2008 in the industry last year.

Here is an exerpt from the press release:

New Zealand’s interactive gaming and entertainment industry shows no signs of an economic slowdown achieving a record sales result of just over $170 million for the 2009 calendar year.

Despite the economic challenges of the last 12 months, sales data compiled by independent market research group GfK Retail and Technology Australia indicates computer and video gaming sales of $170 million – an increase of 12 per cent from 2008. The data includes all sales from hardware, gaming peripherals and traditionally boxed software, yet excludes revenue generated from online retail sales, downloadable content, online games subscriptions and games delivered to mobile phones.

‘Family Games’ are a key factor to the industry’s growth proving to be the number one selling genre in 2009. 27% of all software sales were from the ‘Family Games’ genre – up 34% from 2008. Growth figures for the New Zealand market were three times larger than Australia’s gaming market which recorded a 4 per cent growth.

That’s definitely a first for New Zealand, showing three times the amount of growth than our cousins Australia across the ditch. How did you contribute to this growth and exactly how much on average do you think you spend as a gamer on video games? Food for thought, isn’t it?