We had it coming for some time and now it is official. As of last year, the number of digitally sold video games reached parity with boxed products sold in good old video stores around the corner. That at least are the findings of the latest PC Games Digital Downloads: Analyst Report from researcher NDP Group.
According to the report the largest online distributors are:
Top 5 Frontline Digital Retailers – 2009 (based on unit % share)
- Steampowered.com
- Direct2drive.com
- Blizzard.com
- EA.com
- Worldofwarcraft.com
Top 5 Casual Digital Retailers – 2009 (based on unit % share)
- Bigfishgames.com
- Pogo.com
- Gamehouse.com
- iWin.com
- Realarcade.com
No suprise to see Steam and D2D on the top spots. I didn’t expect EA so high in this list, though. Blizzard and WOW.com are a bit misleading, since they are more like a single product company.¬¨‚Ć With WOW riding high as one of the only commercially successful client based MMOs it’s again not such a big suprise to see them here. However, an extended list would be certainly more interesting. It’s still good to see that the findings correspond mostly with our own market analysis.
On a side note the report states that while having parity on numbers the actual dollar value still differs: 36% digital sales, 64% box sales. My guess would be that this mostly attributable to the numerous special sales and price reductions of most online stores.
