NPD: Video game spending increased slighty to $5.9B during Q1 2011

Industry sales tracker NPD Group confirmed today that the total amount of dough spent by consumers on PC and console video games hit $5.9 billion USD during the first four months of 2011, a 1.5 percent year-on-year increase from 2010.  While not terribly impressive, it still represents growth for the industry.

It's worth noting that (new) retail game sales have fallen.  New physical PC and console games sold at retail accounted for $2.03 billion of the total, a decrease from the $2.26 billion spent during the same four month period last year.

Meanwhile, used game and game rental spending were lumped together with digital sales (which included subscription fees, DLC, social networking, and mobile) to come to a grand total of $1.85 billion.  This is actually an increase from the $1.68 billion garnered by the whole lot last year, unlike what we saw for new physical software sales.

The remaining $2.11 billion was attributed to console hardware and accessory sales.