BERLIN, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Turnover from video games and gaming hardware in Germany increased to 2.8 billion euros (3.1 billion U.S. dollars) in the first half of 2019, a year-on-year increase of 11 percent, the association of the German games industry announced on Tuesday.
"The German games market remained a success story in the first half of 2019," said Felix Falk, managing director of the association.
The strong and continuous growth "demonstrates how economically important computer and video games have been for a long time", Falk said.
The growth of the German video game market was driven "above all" by fees for online services, which saw revenues increase by more than 50 percent to 228 million euros in the first half of the year.
In addition, the market for in-game purchases was up 28 percent to 1.1 billion euros. Such in-game purchases accounted for the lion's share of the German gaming market's turnover in the first half.
However, revenues from gaming hardware such as game consoles, gaming computers and accessories fell from over 1 billion euros to 986 million euros in the first half.
The association published its data before Gamescom, one of the world's largest events for computer and video games, which will kick off in the German city of Cologne next Tuesday.
Last year, around 370,000 visitors attended the Gamescom event, according to the German organizers.
