People love getting on the “ZOMG PC Gaming is DYING!!1!” bandwagon these days. Often proponents of this view pull NPD sales figures to support the claim. However, NPD sales figures are limited to brick and mortar, over the counter sales. So what they don’t take into account is digital sales. It is obvious that Valve’s Steam platform is the biggest digital reseller of games, but they are notoriously sticky when it comes to sharing sales data. 

So what we end up deducing, is that PC game sales have almost certainly declined over the past 5 years, but to what degree remains a mystery. 

Shedding some much needed light on the matter, NPD has published a report which indicates that 48% of PC games sold in the US are digitally distributed. Apparently, 21.3 million “PC Game full-game digital downloads” were purchased in the US in 2009. 23.5 million physical units were sold, putting the figure for overall PC games sold in the US in 2009 at 44 million. 

While 48% of PC games sold were digital, these sales accounted for just 36% of dollars spent onPC gaming. 

According to NPD, these are the 5 biggest full scale digital game distribution networks.

1. Utorrent (LOL jk)

1. Steampowered.com

2. Direct2Drive.com

3. Blizzard.com

4. EA.com

5. Worldofwarcraft.com

And these are the 5 biggest casual digital retailers

1. Bigfishgames.com

2. Pogo.com

3. Gamehouse.com

4. iWin.com

5. Realarcade.com

While digital distribution has taken off in a big way in the US and Europe with their first world bandwidth infrastructure, it is unlikely to gain mass market support in SA any time soon. Despite recent improvements in the local internet sphere, bandwidth is still a problem.

Also, PC games are particularly well priced in South Africa, and it is often cheaper to purchase a game online and have it delivered to your door than it is to download it from Steam. It is also in many cases far quicker, as downloading a 10GB game takes ages on a 384Mb/s ADSL line – still the most common fixed-line broadband connection in the country. 

Discuss digital game sales in the forums