Three years ago, Niko Partners' renowned senior analyst Daniel Ahmad wrote about the distribution of digital game sales to the consoles, explaining that he "really need to stress how large the digital shares are on Xbox compared to other platforms".
At the same time, GamesIndustry wrote a report showing that there were still more physical games sold to the PlayStation consoles than digital. But since then, digital has been growing at a ferocious pace, even on PlayStation, and in a new report on Bluesky, Circana (NPD) executive director and video game analyst Mat Piscatella reveals what the distribution of digital games looks like in the US for 2024.
It turns out that what Ahmad says is still true and digital is by far the most popular for Xbox Series S/X, but for PlayStation 5 it currently accounts for more than three out of four titles sold - and even for Switch, more than every other game sold is digital:
"For the Jan-Aug period, for all titles with both physical and digital sales tracking, 53% of Switch software sales were done digitally compared to 52% in the same period last year.
PS5 is now 78% digital vs 75% digital last year. 91% of XBS software was done digitally this year vs 90% last year."
So, this year, more than nine out of ten games sold for Xbox Series S/X have been digital. We don't know why Xbox players have been more positive about digital game sales for years, but Microsoft was an early adopter of hard drives for the original Xbox and had fully digital Xbox Live Arcade titles very early for Xbox 360, which got players used to the convenience of just being able to buy titles from the dashboard - which might be a part of the explanation.
What do you think is behind the big differences in how games are consumed between the consoles? Oh, and speaking of digital sales, Microsoft kicked off its Shocktober Sale yesterday, just in time for Halloween, so don't miss out if you want to find cheap gaming deals