On the PC, video video games distributed on discs in bodily packing containers have been a wise market rounding error for years now. Destiny 2‘s product sales distribution highlights how the console sport market may lastly (and inexorably) be heading in the direction of that point as successfully.
In an earnings identify this week, Activision revealed that larger than 50 % of Destiny 2‘s product sales on consoles acquired right here via acquire comparatively than on a retail disc. That’s “a new highwater mark” for the company, and it’s method bigger than the “20 to 25 %” of Call of Duty‘s console product sales usually represented by digital copies, consistent with Activision (though Call of Duty World War II is seeing “bigger digital preorders… relative to any prior Call of Duty title.”) Even for online-focused video video games similar to the Overwatch and the distinctive Destiny, solely 30 to 40 % of console product sales usually come from downloads, the company acknowledged.
More importantly, Activision wouldn’t see Destiny 2‘s digital console majority as an outlier. As Activision CFO Spencer Neumann acknowledged inside the earnings identify, “historically, we’ve been seeing that digital mix improve at about 5 components a yr.” With Destiny 2‘s console digital majority, Neumann says, “we think about we’re seeing some acceleration in that digital shift.”
It’s that acceleration which may quickly push the console market over a digital tipping point, and Activision is just not alone in noting the rate of the console market’s digital shift. Earlier this yr, EA acknowledged it expects 40 % of its console sport product sales to return again from downloads in 2017. That’s a huge bounce from 30 % of product sales in 2016, and a huge step in the direction of EA’s long-stated expectation that it is “going to be a 100% digital agency, interval. It’s going to be there some day. It’s inevitable.”