Digital Game Sales Hit $1 Billion in July

Physical media has been on the decline for the last decade, with CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray sales dropping every year, and it seems that video games are starting to follow suit. During the month of February, digital games sales totalled $1.033 billion, a 12% rise on last year, though revenue garnered from mobile games and PC digital distribution platforms, such as Steam.

“The biggest growth drivers in July were mobile and PC, which combined accounted for about 60 percent of the total digital games market,” Joost van Dreunen, Chief Executive Officer of SuperData, said. Console and social games accounted for the rest of the sales.

While digital game sales match those of physical formats in terms of revenue, downloaded games are generally cheaper due to the lack of physical media production overheads or retailers, while many physical releases are supplemented by additional DLC.

“Despite a stabilization of the total addressable mobile games audience, average monthly spending has been steadily inching up,” van Dreunen added. “As we reach the high-point in the struggle for platform dominance in the console segment, the last few months have seen increasingly aggressive DLC and free-to-play strategies,” said van Dreunen. “This includes, for instance, the July 28 release of World of Tanks on the Xbox One, which supports cross-platform gameplay.”

“Following the media blitzes at [the Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show] and Gamescom, the industry is now gearing up for the holiday season,” van Dreunen said. “Consequently, additional downloadable content dominated over new releases, which were mostly remastered [re-releases] or relatively smaller titles.”

Have you transitioned to digital releases, or do you prefer having physical copies of your games?

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