Digital game sales way up in the UK compared to last year

As the digital market has become more and more popular, discussions have been raised regarding its relation to the physical market, and now Games Industry has learned that the UK market is now 30-45% digital.

Games Industry allegedly received confidential digital data which reveals that the digital-to-physical split on certain triple-A games on console now exceeds 45%, with that split estimated to be between 15% and 25% last year.

GfK data only counts physical sales, and this shows that some big names this year have sold below their predecessors, whether that's The Evil Within 2, Wolfenstein II, or Destiny 2, but according to the confidential data, some of these were actually up as a whole, due to the increase in downloads.

One publisher has said that the lack of discounts from retailers might have something to do with this. "UK retailers have been selling new games closer to their RRP, so although digital titles are still quite expensive, they're now closer to their physical counterparts in terms of price," one senior source said. "Some consumers have clearly found that the convenience of digital offsets the now slight premium - whereas before they were paying upwards of £15 more for the privilege, that's not the case this year."

Another publishing boss added that "the challenge retailers face is how they react to this. To protect their revenue, the temptation may be to keep prices high, but this might only cause the digital acceleration to speed up further."

EA has recently revealed its own financial data, which says that 36% of their PS4 and Xbox One sales are digital around the world, growing from 30% from last year. In terms of specifics, this download percentage increase from 25% to 30% from FIFA 17 to 18, with Madden increasing 9% too.

"We were very pleased and a bit surprised at the strength of digital downloads, both for FIFA and Madden," commented CFO Blake J. Jorgensen in EA's latest financial call. "FIFA, in particular, since it's such a global game and sold in many markets where digital is not as strong as it is in some of the more mature markets. So it's great to see the movement towards digital. And we attribute that to some digital-only promotions that we did, some special digital packages, as well as the continued involvement of everyone with Ultimate Team, which is 100% digital, and I think that's driving the adoption."

October's statistics in the UK reveal that physical software sales were down 16% compared to last year, although interestingly some early reports are suggesting physical pre-orders for big upcoming titles like Call of Duty: WWII are strong.

With the Xbox One X and Switch being in high demand, along with their games, do you think we'll see a continuing lean towards digital sales, or will we see physical bounce back?