Retail and digital PC sales almost equal

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 22 July, 2010

In North America.

US PC game digital downloads are reaching parity with in-store purchases, NPD Group says.

In 2009, 21.3 million PC games were downloaded in the US, versus 23.5 million purchased at retail.

Physical retail sales of PC games experienced a year-over-year revenue decline in 2009, but it was still slightly larger than PC digital download sales on a unit basis, NPD said.

So, where are gamers downloading their games from?

NPD listed the top five "frontline" digital retailers for 2009, based on unit percentage share. In at number one was Steampowered.com, followed by Direct2drive.com, Blizzard.com, EA.com and Worldofwarcraft.com. Guess this means Blizzard's games are popular, then.

The top five casual digital retailers are Bigfishgames.com, Pogo.com, Gamehouse.com, iWin.com and Realarcade.com. Frontline digital retailers increased their share of the PC full-game digital download market in the second half of 2009, at the expense of the casual digital retailers, according to NPD.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (17) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • NimbusTLD #1 2 years ago

    Shocking! 45m PC games sold total in 1 year. How many games did 360, PS3 or Wii manage to sell in that time period?

  • pauleyc #2 2 years ago

    /insert obligatory "oh noes, PC gaming is DEAD!" comment

  • NimbusTLD #3 2 years ago

    Found them:

    Wii - 72 million units
    360 - 53 million
    PC - 44.8 million
    PS3 - 33 million

    Not as bad as I thought then!
    Edited by NimbusTLD at 22/07/10 @ 10:05

  • Inigo #4 2 years ago

    I've bought more games on my PC because of steam than i have on my PS3. Its so easy when your bored on a sunday to quickly download something at a click of a button.

  • FooAtari #5 2 years ago

    It was pretty obvious to anyone with a bit common sense that a lot of PC games are now bought digitally.

    Retail and digital combined it's not far behind the PS3 or 360. And digital distribution must surely generate more profits than retail.

  • bad09 #6 2 years ago

    I'm surprised it's equal, from what I understood physical retail only accounted for 20% in North America and Europe.

  • ChaK #7 2 years ago

    @1 and 3 : Nop, those are US sales, we in europe also have a big PC market, I'd even say proportionnaly bigger.

    I for one buy my games on steam 90% and the rest impulse or gog, and I'm perfectly fine with that, I don't need a plastic box and a useless CD

    Edited by ChaK at 22/07/10 @ 10:09

  • spudsbuckley #8 2 years ago

    When you factor in potential sales lost to piracy, which is worse on the PC than any other format, then the PC is kicking all kinds of ass.

  • Scopeh #9 2 years ago

    Wait i thought PC-gaming was dead?

  • Caimbeul #10 2 years ago

    I have 93 games on steam BUT! a lot of this is due to steams crazy (but good) sales whereby i now own entire dev's/publishers catalogues af games.

    I still MUCH prefer physical media though.

  • makeamazing #11 2 years ago

    Good numbers if you just do a simple compare of the numbers but you have to remember that you can get some great deals on PC, got 24 odd THQ games the other day for just over £20. Yes some were old but there were some great savings on Steam. I doubt i would buy 24 cheap PS3 games (as its very unlikely they would be packaged together).

    Also if this also includes casual games then considering the casual market is supposed to be massive, then you probably would think this number is too small?

    So now i've confused myself if this is a good number or not.
    Edited by makeamazing at 22/07/10 @ 12:55

  • alcides #12 2 years ago

    @spudsbuckley

    Piracy has little to no influence on sales. And since I'm tired of arguing over this matter, I'll just say it: piracy could as well not exist, if the market isn't there you can't throw a tantrum and hope this will prompt everyone to give you more whimsical munneys. That's not business, that's plain stupid. Proof: incredible sales figures. People pay for stuff when they see value in it.

  • sneetch #13 2 years ago

    @makeamazing
    Also if this also includes casual games then considering the casual market is supposed to be massive, then you probably would think this number is too small?

    It doesn't include casual games, frontline sales "means digital distributors which specialise in games also commonly available at retail" and not casual games. I think that's why the the casual games portal chart is separate to the frontline one.

    That's according to RockPaperShotgun anyway (sorry for linking it EG, but their article provides more info):

    http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/07/...

  • Darren #14 2 years ago

    Until new games releases are cheaper to buy digitally than from online retailers such as GAME then I'll continue to avoid the likes of Steam who charge the full RRP for them. I've seen price differences of £15 between Steam and GAME online and that is almost the price of some PC games! I've only bought sub-£10 bargains from Steam such as Trine and Torchlight, which in effect makes it akin to XBLA and PSN releases on the consoles.

  • UncleLou #15 2 years ago

    Until new games releases are cheaper to buy digitally than from online retailers

    Good luck waiting, never going to happen. I am glad to pay the same as I'd pay for a physical copy for a service of something like Steam. But then the UK is a bit special, admittedly, your PC game prices are probably the lowest by far in the Western world, so the difference to Steam prices is a lot bigger.

  • Rubarack #16 2 years ago

    In other news PC gaming is dying based on reports that retail sales shrunk 40% over the last few years.

  • makeamazing #17 2 years ago

    @sneetch, i see... but lately in places like game i see lots and lots of casual games from bigfish etc nowadays... stuff that is casual and available on download systems... so i have to admit i am more confused as ever :D