2020 has been the year of the digital video game. Two mainstream consoles released this year had no disk drives at all, the all-digital Xbox Series S and the digital-only version of the PS5, and a look over the year’s numbers reflects this new, no-disk way of playing.
Based on the current data, it appears that video game disks are slowly going to way of DVDs and other physical media, slowly being replaced by digital, downloadable versions. Many factors seeming helped to push gaming in this direction including the introduction of the Stadia, a console from Google that only streams games without storing them, in November 2019 as well as the no-disk Sony and Xbox consoles. Also accelerating the shift to digital in 2020 was the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic, forcing stores like GameStop to close temporarily and making it more and more difficult to get physical games. And 2020’s revenue numbers are reflecting these changes.
In 2020, the video game industry raked in $158 billion USD on global, digital revenue. Physical sales, however, were only $14.9 billion USD. This includes mobile, console, PC, and tablet gaming, but also paid DLC and in-app purchases. Digital store downloads like the PlayStation Store was 73% of total sales. Physical sales for consoles was 28%, down from the 37% from 2019, 40% in 2018, and 50% in 2017.
The vast majority of PC gaming has been digital for a long time through sites like GOG, Steam, and dev-specific stores like the Epic Games Store. Only about 2% of its revenue came from boxed PC games. Most PC titles don’t even have a physical release anymore or have a very limited one. Mobile and tablet gaming by their very nature are all 100% digital sales, and the mobile market has been booming this year. Five mobile games earned more than a billion dollars this year, including Pokemon GO, Honor of Kings, and PUBG Mobile, adding to the overall revenue of the gaming industry with exuberance. This has mostly been from in-app purchases; free-to-play games with microtransactions make up the massive majority of sale.
Most likely, this drop in physical sales will continue as digital becomes more convenient, and as consoles inch away from physical media. While many might miss the traditions of camping in front of a game store until the midnight release, it’s difficult to argue with the allure of digitalizing games. As internet connections for downloading games continues to improve, as consoles continue to move towards digitalization, and as more and more brick-and-mortar game stores close up for good, the amount of digital sales for video games has nowhere to go but up.
Source: PCGamesn, GamesIndustry, SPGlobal
Image Source: GamesIndustry
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