My house is littered with the remnants of gaming eras gone by. I think this is mostly a function of my formerly very frugal self, one who would keep all packaging so that I could resell things at a slightly higher value, thereby fuelling my obsession with gaming further. The initial habit remains however I’ve long since past the time where I’ve needed to sell things in order to continue my habit and now I find myself surrounded by the physical remains of my ravenous gaming habit. However those numerous relics of my habit are only a fraction of the total games that I play with the vast majority of them now coming to me in a purely digital form, no longer taking up space in the physical world.
It seems that this particular trend isn’t just my own experience either as a staggering 92% of games sales on PC are digital. Part of this is likely due to the meteoric rise of the Free to Play model with MOBAs being responsible for a large part of revenue on the platform, enough so that it’s pushed PC gaming back to the top of the pile. Digital hasn’t completely taken over every gaming platform yet however with console users still largely preferring to purchase retail copies, with only a handful habitually downloading their games. Downloaded titles are still seeing positive growth on these platforms however and given enough time (and improving bandwidth) there’s little doubt that consoles will have a similar split sooner rather than later.
Now you’d think as someone who’s a bit of a collector’s edition junkie that I’d be heavily skewed towards physical copies however the times when I feel compelled to spend that extra cash on a physical copy are becoming few and far between. In fact based on the pre-orders I can dredge up I’ve bought a grand total of 3 physical games this year with only a further 2 before the year is out. Based on my weekly review habit this puts me pretty close to the 92% figure that applies to PC gamers as a whole, a rather interesting fact that I wasn’t really aware of. Primarily I can attribute this shift to 2 factors: money and convenience.
When I’m looking for a game to review the last thing I want to do is browse around a game shop for hours looking for something that might be appropriate. Indeed at home I can access gameplay videos, screenshots and even other reviews should I wish, all from the same place that will take my purchase. Combine that with the fact that Steam titles are typically cheaper when compared to their physical counterparts (sometimes by a large margin thanks to sites like DLcompare) and buying from a digital platform is just the better decision to make. Consoles, for the most part, don’t meet these two qualifying factors with the respective platform stores usually being the same (or higher) prices as retail and lacking any of the convenience features that Steam et. al. provide.
Honestly though this statistic really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who considers themselves a PC gamer. Steam has been the go to platform for the better part of a decade now and whilst some of us might lash out a little more cash on a particular title now and then those times are becoming increasingly rare. I don’t see this trend stopping anytime soon either as the downsides are so minimal when compared to the benefits that digital platforms provide. What will be interesting to see is how the retail games industry copes with these figures as time goes on as I’m not sure many could survive if only 8% of total games sales went through them.
