GameStop Controls 21 Percent of US Market

Just how mega is megaretailer GameStop in the United States? According to some people's math, it controls a fifth of the entire market in the country.

We all knew GameStop is doing big business in the US, but now we've got an exact number. According to Gamasutra's figures, the retailer holds sway over a somewhat underwhelming 21% of the entire games market in this country. That's when it comes specifically to hardware and software sales, though. It doesn't count sales of accessories and PC software, as the data regarding how much revenue GameStop pulls in from those categories isn't explicitly stated in their reports.

So what exactly does it mean that GameStop "controls" a fifth of the market? Well, as Gamasutra puts it, that "marketshare defines the power it wields when working with publishers."

The percentages were extrapolated using GameStop's own revenue reports and the sales data compiled by the NPD every month. GameStop's fiscal year is roughly equivalent to the month-by-month periods that the NPD tracks, so holding up the NPD numbers to the GameStop numbers and doing a little bit of math got Gamasutra its estimates.

With the amount of stores in this country, you'd think that GameStop would control a more dramatic percentage of the market, but apparently there are still plenty of people (79% of the market, to be precise) going to "other retailers" like Best Buy.

21% is nothing to scoff at, though, and Gamasutra's other research shows that the company's presence in the US is maybe even more widespread than you may have imagined. There are 1.4 GameStops per 100,000 people in the United States, according to their figure. The state with the highest density of GameStops? Delaware. I know that's because Delaware's tiny, but I like to imagine it has a GameStop on every other block, too.