Digital sales almost overtake physical sales in Europe

Digital Game Sales Data (GSD) has indicated a trend towards digital rather than boxed AAA games purchases in Europe in 2019. The data includes a select range of AAA franchises and tallied their digital and physical sales for Q1 2019 and Q1 2018.

The IPs utilized for the analysis include: Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Star Wars, Batman, Battlefield, Monster Hunter, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, FIFA, Dragon Ball, Need for Speed and Ubisoft’s range of Tom Clancy games.

The seven markets surveyed were: Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg), France, Italy, GSA (Germany, Switzerland and Austria), Iberia (Spain and Portugal), Nordics (including Denmark, Norway and Sweden) and the UK and Ireland.

Q1 2019:

Country	Overall Q1 Sales	Digital Q1 Sales	Physical Q1 Sales	Digitsation
Benelux	412,825	178,785	234,040	43%
France	851,234	401,013	450,221	47%
GSA*	1,355,423	673,357	682,066	50%
Iberia	634,006	219,747	414,259	35%
Italy	494,339	163,954	330,385	33%
Nordics	372,701	247,363	125,338	66%
UK and Ireland	1,360,942	761,333	599,609	56%

 
Q1 2018:

Country	Overall Q1 Sales	Digital Q1 Sales	Physical Q1 Sales	Digitsation
Benelux	473,285	156,889	316.396	33%
France	1,392,256	433,216	959,040	31%
GSA*	1,754,677	711,481	1,043,196	41%
Iberia	775,450	204,307	571,143	26%
Italy	622,060	156,275	465,785	25%
Nordics	469,733	250,836	218.897	53%
UK and Ireland	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a

 
*GSA – Germany, Switzerland, Austria.

All six of the markets in both 2018 and 2019 (UK and Ireland stats were only gathered for 2019) reveal a substantial trend towards digitization. In Benelux, for example, 33% of AAA game sales were digital in Q1 2018 but 43% were digital in Q1 2019. France showed even more startling growth, with a jump from 31% digital in Q1 2018 to 47% digital in Q1 2019.

In Q1 2018 Nordics was the only market to have a higher proportion of digital sales than physical sales, at 53% digital. In Q1 2019 the UK and Ireland joined it as a majority AAA digital sales region (56% digital), with the GSA region split at 50% digital, 50% physical.

In the Nordic market digital sales accounted for 66% of total AAA sales, making this particular market almost two-thirds digital.

Looked at overall, European AAA sales in Q1 2019 were still predominantly digital, but the margin is slim: 52% physical to 48% digital.

If the momentum towards digital sales continues at the rate suggested by GSD’s research it seems certain that digital will soon be the dominant medium for AAA console game sales.

Related Topics: Digital Distribution

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