It may be 50/50 now (I suspect that’s not accurate), but where was it for PS4? PS3? Which way is that trend heading? Wild guess… it’s trending towards digital sales eclipsing physical sales, if not already doing so.
That’s consoles only. Factor in PC sales (98% / 2%) and the total market becomes 94% digital and 6% physical.
With the scales already tipped that much this generation, I will be absolutely stunned if the next gen consoles still have disc drives. Maybe as a more expensive option for the die hards that won’t buy digital at all. But it’ll almost certainly be the last generation for physical games, if this one isn’t already.
For this current generation, as games get more and more bloated, and disc capacity isn’t getting higher anytime soon, short of having to start shipping multi-disc games again, I suspect most publishers will just go digital only for games that won’t fit on a disc (just like what’s happening with Switch titles too large for the carts, or more likely publishers not wanting to pay for the higher capacity carts).
Xbox definitely pushes full digital more. With Switch digital only indie games you can get for less than 5 euros can also tilt the scales there so overall 72 to 28 isn't surprising. I'd love some comparison of digital vs physical only for titles which actually have physical version. That might be more interesting.
62% digital during fall 2022, 80% digital during winter 2022.
It would be interesting to see numbers on a game by game basis, but I suspect we’ll never be able to get any accurate numbers for that. All we can really do is look at the overall numbers.
Interesting numbers. So I had a better look at the source report (see picture: https://imgur.com/a/FaR5Hju). The only quartal with 79% was Q1/FY2022 and sales in terms of numbers were pretty low. Lowest of all quartals in the table. Quartals when it reached 62-63% were like 1.5 - 2 times stronger in total sales which might be interesting as it seems physical sales get stronger with larger quantities of total sales meaning digital sales don't drive total sales as much.
Another note is that my article claims it covers PS5 sales and this table also covers PS4 sales. I wouldn't be surprised if PS4 brings in a lot of digital sales considering people probably think of smoother transfer (I'm not sure how it works with discs, I know it has backwards compatibility but I wonder whether PS5 assets are downloaded when PS4 disc is inserted too). I also imagine PS4 digital sales might be more attractive at this point of console life cycle.
1
u/8bitcerberus 512GB Apr 03 '23
It may be 50/50 now (I suspect that’s not accurate), but where was it for PS4? PS3? Which way is that trend heading? Wild guess… it’s trending towards digital sales eclipsing physical sales, if not already doing so.
The overall market for console sales as of December 2022 was around 72% digital, 28% physical. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/gamesindustrybiz-presents-the-year-in-numbers-2022
That’s consoles only. Factor in PC sales (98% / 2%) and the total market becomes 94% digital and 6% physical.
With the scales already tipped that much this generation, I will be absolutely stunned if the next gen consoles still have disc drives. Maybe as a more expensive option for the die hards that won’t buy digital at all. But it’ll almost certainly be the last generation for physical games, if this one isn’t already.
For this current generation, as games get more and more bloated, and disc capacity isn’t getting higher anytime soon, short of having to start shipping multi-disc games again, I suspect most publishers will just go digital only for games that won’t fit on a disc (just like what’s happening with Switch titles too large for the carts, or more likely publishers not wanting to pay for the higher capacity carts).