Downloadable titles make up 92% of PC games market

[fellix]

Analyst: Downloadable titles make up 92% of PC games market

That may sound high, even to people who haven't bought a PC game on a disc for years, but it lines up with other numbers reported throughout the industry. Last year, Payday 2 publisher Starbreeze announced that 80 percent of its 1.58 million first-month sales came from downloads, for instance. And let's not forget the scores of PC games that are totally ignoring retail sales for 100 percent downloadable releases these days, from Dota 2 to Day Z.

Download-dominated PC gaming is a newer phenomenon than some gamers might realize. As recently as 2010, analyst firm NPD was estimating that downloads made up only 48 percent of all PC game sales.

One possible reason for the sharp increase over the last four years is money brought in from newly ascendant free-to-play and microtransaction-driven PC games. In April, a DFC report on the PC games market found that free-to-play games, especially MOBAs like League of Legends and Dota 2, were driving heavy increases in overall PC game spending, pushing it above overall console game spending for the first time in recent memory.

 

[Grall]

The game store I frequent has hardly any PC games in stock anymore, and they're diversifying into retro gaming as well, selling NES carts for the equivalent of several hundred US$ apiece for example.

I myself have not bought a single hardcopy PC game in many years now except for some collector's editions (mainly Blizzard games with one notable exception being LIMBO.)

 

[joker454]

That actually sounds lower than expected to me given that pc retail games are just about impossible to find anymore, and given that digital distribution has been the accepted norm for just about eternity in pc land.

 

[Rurouni]

I'm forced to go digital with PC because disc based games is more expensive, and the fact that disc is mostly used as content delivery only, thus why bother with it? Is there still a PC game that needs no CD patch or no online activation?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I wonder what harmed the PC retail market the most.
Piracy, Steam's convenience, SecuROM's draconian DRM or the prolonged battle between Blu-Ray and HD DVD?

Regardless, the four together created the perfect storm for killing the retail market.

 

[Malo]

I wonder what harmed the PC retail market the most.
Piracy, Steam's convenience, SecuROM's draconian DRM or the prolonged battle between Blu-Ray and HD DVD?

Regardless, the four together created the perfect storm for killing the retail market.

I'm going to say Steam had the biggest impact over the past 5 years. Piracy and DRM has been around since the dawn of PC Gaming, but obviously torrents etc has made them a lot more accessible over time but the acceptance of Steam as the goto platform for PC gaming is enormous.

I'd say the only true remaining retail market would be Amazon and Gamestop website purchases.

 

[ArcticCircle]

I don't like how digital versions of the same game are often way more pricey then physical copy. For example at launch, Watch Dogs for PC was 26 euros cheaper as physical copy from local game story then from steam. Currently it's 30 euros vs 59.99 euros steam copy. It's Insane.

I'd like to buy all my games digitally, but no way I'm going to buy them outside of sales.

 

[pjbliverpool]

I'm still 100% physical copy - usually from Amazon but there are plenty of websites out there that supply physical PC games. As ArcticCircle says above, it's usually cheaper (often by a lot), at least here in the UK.

Great news that PC gaming is doing so well though. PC game spending higher than console games spending eh? Oh nooo, PC's are dying!

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I don't like how digital versions of the same game are often way more pricey then physical copy. For example at launch, Watch Dogs for PC was 26 euros cheaper as physical copy from local game story then from steam. Currently it's 30 euros vs 59.99 euros steam copy. It's Insane.

I'd like to buy all my games digitally, but no way I'm going to buy them outside of sales.

Steam is actually quite pricey outside the sales periods.
Though my guess is that they don't really sell a lot outside the sales and release periods.

 

[orangpelupa]

depending of the region. If i buy Digital games on my region* "singapore", its cheaper to buy physical game.

but if i buy from mexico or india, digital games are cheaper.

*Indonesia did not have their own region for origin and steam. But PSN indonesia is avalable and almost all price are 10 dollar cheaper than US PSN.

 

[Pottsey]

I installed my first disk based games in years and all I could think off was how painfully slow it was to transfer/install and patching was a pain. I had not realized just how fast Broadband speeds had got recently till I tried that DVD install.

 

[orangpelupa]

i will be happy to have internet as fast as yours. It always take days to finish downloading game for me, when Steam and Origin pretty dumb about resuming download.

luckily now both of them already auto-resume download properly (the resulting instalation did not broken).

btw all indie and f2p games i have are digital downloads.

 

[homerdog]

My connection is fairly modest at 20/1Mbps but even large games take only a few hours to download. You must have a very very slow connection.