In July we reported that 48% of PC game sales in the US in 2009 were attributed to digital downloads.
PC gaming is widely considered to be dying, thanks largely to declining retail sales figures. However, these figures do not include digital sales, and according to recent NPD figures, digital downloads are continuing to increase in popularity.
Reporting exclusively on US sales trends, NPD claims that in the first 6 months of 2010, 11.2 million PC games have been downloaded from digital retailers, while just 8.2 million PC games were bought from brick and mortar retailers. Unfortunately for PC gamers, while it does indicate that more people are buying PC games online, it also shows a year-on-year decrease of 14 percent in PC game sales, which technically means that the PC game market shrank significantly in the first half of the year.
However, it is worth noting that StarCraft II was released shortly after these figures were finalised. Strong sales of Blizzard’s RTS, as well as further projected strong sales of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm later this year, should help overall PC game sales in 2010 top last year.
Interestingly, although digital retailers are selling more PC games than physical retailers, they are making less money. In fact, despite more games selling online, brick and mortar retail stores have taken 57% of revenue share on PC games this year. This is thought to be due to price reduction sales on PC games which have become exceedingly prevalent online, which has led to an increase in game sales but does not equate to increased revenue generation.
According to NPD, Steam continued to show prolific growth in the core gamer market, while Big Fish continued to grow in the casual space.
As it stands, Steam is the largest core digital retailer, followed by Direct2Drive, EA.com, Worldofwarcraft.com and Blizzard.com.
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