Games Sales Split Between Retail and Digital Distribution
Wednesday, January 13 2010 @ 09:00 AM GMT
by Constantine Mishin-Lutzky
Would you be surprised if I told you that 90% of console game sales are from retail? And how about 79% of games purchased for PC/Mac and portables? That's what NPD saw during Q3 2009.
Do you believe that the future of gaming is in Digital Distribution? Well, you may be right, but with looking at current figures, that future is pretty far away. Sony and Microsoft both have games up for download for their various platforms, but the absolute majority seems to prefer physical ownership...
Nowhere is it more apparent than with consoles. NPD has revealed that 90 percent of all new and used console sales, add-ons, song packs and rentals were made from physical retail or rental services during Q3 2009.
However, handhelds and PC/Mac also show a clear retail advantage, too, with 79 percent of games acquired for portable, PC/MAC, mobile and smartphones, were also purchased in physical format. Personally, I see that grouping skewed and also wrong in part. Mobile and smartphone games cannot be purchased at retail, and the huge success of digital download services such as Steam on PC/Mac is completely skewed by handhelds, on which digital downloads are either non-existent (DS games outside of DSiWare), or rather unpopular (downloadable games for the PSP, and the unsuccessful PSP Go).
During Q3 ‘09, PC, Mac and consoles proved to be “the most popular platforms among gamers, followed by portable systems and cell phones”, with smartphones ranking the lowest.
NPD's Anita Frazier commented on the data, saying that “While physical retail product remains the driving force behind industry sales, the role of digital distribution in the games ecosystem continues to climb,” and “Publishers and retailers must keep an eye on the current state of the marketplace and must map ahead for future strategies.".
If you ask me, the climb rate of DD is quite slow, at least in consoles. It'll be quite a while until publishers really have to change their strategies!
As a side note in the report, NPD mentioned that 4 percent of gamers (6 million consumers) admitted to using P2P services with 72 percent of pirated downloads occurring for PC and Mac - all I can say is that the leading platforms are hardly a surprise given how easy piracy is on them.
