Digital Sales Ratio 2024 Edition

[ethomaz]

US (Revenue)

Jan-Aug 2024
XBS: 91%
PS5: 78%
NSW: 53%

Jan-Aug 2023
XBS: 90%
PS5: 75%
NSW: 52%

Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social)

Alright, let's chat digital video game sales. For those titles which Circana has both physical & digital tracking (excluding all titles without both physical AND digital sales in the period), we are seeing a bit of a slowdown in the US dollar share growth rate of digital. Cont...

bsky.app

Europe (Unit)

2024
XBS: 81%
PS5: 68%
NSW: 35%

 

[Sloane_Ranger]

Have to ask: Are the numbers quoted for Full Game only? Or do they include DLC? Makes a huge difference.

EDIT: For the US data from Matt

 

[rofif]

These are nonsense.
It's apples to oranges.
Sure, more sale on general is happening on PSN but most of these games don't have physical release and even if, physical releasees are harder to find nowadays.

It was proven in insomniac leak that big AAA games sell MORE on disc... at least few years back

SONY games were sold physically at a rate of about 65% until early 2022.
So Sony trying to kill discs is a really strange move.

 

[ethomaz]

Have to ask: Are the numbers quoted for Full Game only? Or do they include DLC? Makes a huge difference.

EDIT: For the US data from Matt

He said that…
I don’t think it includes DLC because DLC is digital only.
It is only included games with physical and digital editions.

For those titles which Circana has both physical & digital tracking (excluding all titles without both physical AND digital sales in the period), we are seeing a bit of a slowdown in the US dollar share growth rate of digital.

 

[ethomaz]

These are nonsense.
It's apples to oranges.
Sure, more sale on general is happening on PSN but most of these games don't have physical release and even if, physical releasees are harder to find nowadays.

It was proven in insomniac leak that big AAA games sell MORE on disc... at least few years back

SONY games were sold physically at a rate of about 65% until early 2022.
So Sony trying to kill discs is a really strange move.

The data only includes games with physical + digital.
It is the best source we have for digital ratio.

 

[rofif]

The data only includes games with physical + digital.
It is the best source we have for digital ratio.

GSD data or leak ?

 

[ethomaz]

GSD data or leak ?

Mat @ Circana data… he was very clear about it.

 

[rofif]

Mat @ Circana data… he was very clear about it.

Seems strange. How could physical plummet SO MUCH in just 2 years?
Must be missing something.
Or the physical really is so good only for Sony games.

We had alan wake 2
Wukong
Dead Rising remake

3 games in my recent memory that staggered physical releases too

 

[ethomaz]

Seems strange. How could physical plummet SO MUCH in just 2 years?
Must be missing something.
Or the physical really is so good only for Sony games.

We had alan wake 2
Wukong
Dead Rising remake

3 games in my recent memory that staggered physical releases too

His point is the opposite…
The last two years the digital ratio grow is decreasing.

“we are seeing a bit of a slowdown in the US dollar share growth rate of digital”

And to be fair I think digital reached where it should reach… no more big grows in digital ratio when it is already over 70% in US.

Edit - Wukong is like 95% of sales digital because over 95% of the sales are PC.

Edit 2 - Sony data is worldwide that includes Europe that digital ratio is lower than US, Japan & Asia that digital rate is way way smaller (30-40%?), etc.

 

[Bryank75]

Nearly a third of AA and AAA games are bought physically on Playstation in Europe... That's very strong still.

Can't throw that away.

Digital future on our platform is still quite healthy.

 

[Alabtrosmyster]

By now physical games are pretty hard to find, they're all collector's eidition by definition.

 

[Alabtrosmyster]

Nearly a third of AA and AAA games are bought physically on Playstation in Europe... That's very strong still.

Can't throw that away.

Digital future on our platform is still quite healthy.

I had some time to burn on saturday and went around some stores where I live (Best Buy/Walmart)

Their video games sections are pathetic, most of it is controllers and headphones.... Especially the shrinking xbox section.

 

[Bryank75]

I had some time to burn on saturday and went around some stores where I live (Best Buy/Walmart)

Their video games sections are pathetic, most of it is controllers and headphones.... Especially the shrinking xbox section.

The store options here are not great for gaming but there is Smyths, which is well stocked usually.

No game or game stop anymore though.

 

[Alabtrosmyster]

The store options here are not great for gaming but there is Smyths, which is well stocked usually.

No game or game stop anymore though.

The games stops in my area have become "geek" toys stores with a couple of games thrown in.

 

[Landiri]

I lived in a town with 200k population, that had only 2 Stores selling Games.
One is a big National Franchise, selling PS and Switch Games, but no Xbox.

The other was a smaller and more personal Games Store, which closed late 2019, because it wasn't worth it anymore.

And even Retail is often happening over Online-Shipments.

PC is Digital for 10-15 Years.
Xbox is mostly Digital because of Gamepass.

PS and Switch will follow soon.

 

[Bryank75]

The games stops in my area have become "geek" toys stores with a couple of games thrown in.

Yeah, before Game Stop left here, they filled the places with Funko Pops and lots of plushies and random stuff that never seemed to sell....

It was a bad move and I think they could have done something much better.

 

[rofif]

I lived in a town with 200k population, that had only 2 Stores selling Games.
One is a big National Franchise, selling PS and Switch Games, but no Xbox.

The other was a smaller and more personal Games Store, which closed late 2019, because it wasn't worth it anymore.

And even Retail is often happening over Online-Shipments.

PC is Digital for 10-15 Years.
Xbox is mostly Digital because of Gamepass.

PS and Switch will follow soon.

don't you have a delivery service?!
Do you think people only buy games in their home town?
Everyone buys physical games online.

Digital on consoles is death compared to digital on steam.
It's not the same at all. Steam allows you to file access, backup, cracking, modding and whatever you want. Even cdkey sites outpricing themselves.
NONE of that is a thing with psn and a lot of that is a thing with physical.

edit: In poland we have this extremely amazing postal service that's a po box. You order something to it and pick it up from there with an app. Super comfy and fast. No need to wait around for couriers. delivery is 3$.

 

[DarkLordOtaku]

Yeah, before Game Stop left here, they filled the places with Funko Pops and lots of plushies and random stuff that never seemed to sell....

It was a bad move and I think they could have done something much better.

It's hard for any brick and mortar store to stay in business these days. Gamestop has had a particularly rough go of it, given how much digital sales have grown across all platforms.

 

[Bryank75]

It's hard for any brick and mortar store to stay in business these days. Gamestop has had a particularly rough go of it, given how much digital sales have grown across all platforms.

It's very true and rents here are outrageous and the government really doesn't do much for retail here... Many streets are just empty now.

 

[Yurinka]

Seems strange. How could physical plummet SO MUCH in just 2 years?
Must be missing something.

It didn't, it has been something progressive year after year as we seen in Sony's publicly shared numbers for the whole PS catalog, not only the Sony games, which represent a small portion of the total market. As I remember two years ago it was around 70% for PS (worldwide, not just USA).

There are also many digital only games, and many indie games who release physical version but only releasing a small amount of physical copies.

And well, outside game sales, the subscriptions and specially DLC revenue kept increasing. The percent of the total game revenue coming from physical sales keep shrinking year after year.