Digital increase in game sales not offsetting physical decline

Figures from The NPD group show that even though digital sales of games are increasingly rapidly, they just aren’t enough to offset the decline in sales of physical game copies.  Year-on-year sales of digital games for the second quarter of 2012 versus 2011 show that sales are up 17% for the USA -impressive but not enough.

Anita Frazier, who is an analyst at the NPD Group, stated, “While this growth is in stark contrast to the declines in new physical software and hardware sales, the size of digital sales is not quite large enough to offset these declines, leading to an overall drop in consumer spending in Q2 by 16 percent.”

The NPD group said that this superiority of digital games is not just present in the USA, there is rapidly growing digital game demand in other nations particularly in the U.K, France and Germany.

Frazier added, “Europe differed from the US in terms of softer mobile spending, but greater stability in rental trends. Growth in full-game and add-on content downloads in the second quarter is surprisingly similar as the content behind this increase is suitable to both markets.”

Personally, the lower prices of digital games mean consumers should get more for their money – but lower prices buying the same amount of games ultimately means less revenue for game companies. Do you buy your games digitally or do you prefer having the physical copy? Let us know in the comments.

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