Revenue from the sale of physical games dropped 2.8% in the UK last year but the actual number of games dropped even further, down 7.1%. There is a disparity as a larger number of higher priced games have been sold including Switch titles and ridiculously expensive collectors editions.
Unsurprisingly PlayStation 4 accounted for the majority of sales, 42.2%, but that still includes a huge 9.7% drop in total sales for boxed PS4 games during 2018.
Later this month the official UK sales charts will start including digital downloads, so that should shake the chart up considerably. All the big publishers and developers are contributing digital data apart from Bethesda, Nintendo & Konami, so if people are shifting from physical to digital purchases those three publishers are likely to see there games fall way down the charts, or perhaps not even make the top forty.
Source: GI.Biz
Foxhound_Solid
Still a fan of a boxed game. The art of collecting them, keeping them in mint condition etc.Its all part of the hobby we love as Gamers.
But, we all know changes are coming as being able to cut away from a physical copy prevents preowned markets ring-fencing other avenues of capital, lowers cost of manufacture and distribution and gives the dev teams much tighter control of their product. As much as we love the physical side of owning a game, in actual fact, downloading/streaming makes much more sense for the dev teams so it will eventually tip the scale. Hope its way, way, way into the future though….