UPDATE Digital Game Sales Finally Top Retail Sales

[Treblaine]

My feelings on this:

Spoiler

Good luck buying your AAA titles digitaly and your rental services. Digital media will ruin gaming archaeology.

Steam, Origins and lots and lots of digital distributors already sale AAA titles. And it works perfectly fine. Most of my triple A titles are bought from Steam on sales.

And how will it ruin gaming archaelogy?

You won't be able to collect playable Games, Boxes, Manuals.

A trivial distraction to what gaming really TRULY is about. The reason we all really care about games.

It's like coveting a reel of film that is to fragile to ever be used or even scanned.

The important thing that matters is the GAMES! The experiences. And those experiences cannot last. CDs decay over time, ROMS rust but a data file can be backed up and preserved indefinitely and be infinitely redistributed, remixed and remastered.

Don't you see? Hard copies are FAR more fleeting and intangible than digital copies. A digital copy can never decay or disappear into non-existence, it will always be there.

I can't find a copy of Super Mario RPG any more for less than £40 yet I have the complete Doom on a USB playing via a source port (Zdoom) that vastly improves controls and performance. I bought the doom collection on Steam by-the-way. It will never disappear, and long after the last Mario RPG has rusted away rom-rips and virtual-console re-releases are all that will remain, THAT is the archaeological legacy! Just one of information.

 

[TheLastSamurai14]

Retail? What's that? And what the heck is that thing in the picture?

All joking aside, this is great news. I definitely use digital because I'm too much of a lazy bastard to go to the store. It's much more convenient. Plus, Steam and GOG's specials are amazing, whereas most stores don't have anything like them aside from bargain bins and used games.

 

[Triforceformer]

Does this include sales through Steam? If not, then I feel we may be late to the party in announcing this.

 

[esperandote]

My feelings on this:

Spoiler

Good luck buying your AAA titles digitaly and your rental services. Digital media will ruin gaming archaeology.

Steam, Origins and lots and lots of digital distributors already sale AAA titles. And it works perfectly fine. Most of my triple A titles are bought from Steam on sales.

And how will it ruin gaming archaelogy?

You won't be able to collect playable Games, Boxes, Manuals.

A trivial distraction to what gaming really TRULY is about. The reason we all really care about games.

It's like coveting a reel of film that is to fragile to ever be used or even scanned.

The important thing that matters is the GAMES! The experiences. And those experiences cannot last. CDs decay over time, ROMS rust but a data file can be backed up and preserved indefinitely and be infinitely redistributed, remixed and remastered.

Don't you see? Hard copies are FAR more fleeting and intangible than digital copies. A digital copy can never decay or disappear into non-existence, it will always be there.

I can't find a copy of Super Mario RPG any more for less than £40 yet I have the complete Doom on a USB playing via a source port (Zdoom) that vastly improves controls and performance. I bought the doom collection on Steam by-the-way. It will never disappear, and long after the last Mario RPG has rusted away rom-rips and virtual-console re-releases are all that will remain, THAT is the archaeological legacy! Just one of information.

Nice set of pictures

I also care about the experience, that's why I collect games that give me good experiences.
It's great that the [games] roms of the are there for when the hard copies dissapear but the storage of it's information isn't the same than the material evidence.

 

[draythefingerless]

Digital is the future for the MAIN source of gaming purchase, but retail will always have a place for it. Dont forget those nifty LEGENDARY, EXTREME EDITION packs. my witcher 2 game is one of those, complete witha map, soundtrack, game guide, a real coin of the game. those are ALWAYS awesome.

 

[CrimsonBlaze]

Personally, I'm a hardware guy (and it's why I went to college for) and not so much a software guy. I don't dismiss the sale of digital media, nor do I feel that it is inferior to its physical representation. I just grew up in a physical world and if I can own something that I can physically hold in my hand, then I'll go for it.

If anything, I'm glad that digital media is doing well. This means that instead of having to wait for certain classics to be re-released in HD for the current consoles, we can just download original versions from the comfort of our own home (unless you really need to hunt down for the physical cartridge/disk of the game on Amazon or eBay).

 

[ph0b0s123]

It's really odd, I don't remember the last time I went to a shop to buy a game, but I mainly buy retail. That is I buy from an on-line retailer and have the game posted free of charge. This works out cheaper than Steam. Don't get me wrong I also get games from Steam when they have a killer deal on. But otherwise buying retail, all be it not from a bricks and mortar store, is how I normally buy.

Never brought a game from GFW Live or perish the thought Origin. Most of the ones I get from Steam are ones that have Steamworks anyway so I would have to use Steam anyway.

I would never want to give up having a physical copy of a game that is no subject to on-line outages or account bans. Not unless the price of on-line is a lot less, but no-one is offering that at the moment.

I would have a rant about how the industry seems to be moving to a games as a service, rather than something you purchase, but without any pricing changes, but that would be off topic...

 

[Treblaine]

My feelings on this:

Spoiler

Good luck buying your AAA titles digitaly and your rental services. Digital media will ruin gaming archaeology.

Steam, Origins and lots and lots of digital distributors already sale AAA titles. And it works perfectly fine. Most of my triple A titles are bought from Steam on sales.

And how will it ruin gaming archaelogy?

You won't be able to collect playable Games, Boxes, Manuals.

A trivial distraction to what gaming really TRULY is about. The reason we all really care about games.

It's like coveting a reel of film that is to fragile to ever be used or even scanned.

The important thing that matters is the GAMES! The experiences. And those experiences cannot last. CDs decay over time, ROMS rust but a data file can be backed up and preserved indefinitely and be infinitely redistributed, remixed and remastered.

Don't you see? Hard copies are FAR more fleeting and intangible than digital copies. A digital copy can never decay or disappear into non-existence, it will always be there.

I can't find a copy of Super Mario RPG any more for less than £40 yet I have the complete Doom on a USB playing via a source port (Zdoom) that vastly improves controls and performance. I bought the doom collection on Steam by-the-way. It will never disappear, and long after the last Mario RPG has rusted away rom-rips and virtual-console re-releases are all that will remain, THAT is the archaeological legacy! Just one of information.

Nice set of pictures

I also care about the experience, that's why I collect games that give me good experiences.
It's great that the roms of the are there for when the hard copies dissapear but the storage of it's information isn't the same than the material evidence.

I also collect games, I have over 127 games on Steam, many more downloaded from GoG yet the majority I have not played even a year after purchase.

To me, luminous creations are games not this crude matter.

 

[dimensional]

In a way I am glad digital game sales are doing well I find they are great for getting games that I cant get physically anymore (or at least very easily) but as for modern games I would still go physical media for a few reasons but chief among them being I dont want to have my computer out of action for 3 days while it downloads an 8gb game and I dont want that game taking up so much space on my hard drive.

One thing that does worry me a bit though is price fixing if digital ever truly takes over, especially if every major publisher/developer has their own service you have to subscribe to they could easily just set the price and it wouldnt be cheap either with no competition and what if you violate one of their rules somehow, do they ban you and deny you access to all of your games you purchased off them?

But as it stands I dont think physical game copies are in trouble yet 1.44 billion is still to hefty an amount to ignore plus they are mostly going after different markets.

The only way digital distribution will ever pose a real threat to boxed products is if they establish solid services people can trust secondly the infrastructure in many countries would need to be massively improved i.e every home with huge bandwidth connections or thirdly everyone decides they want to play angry birds and snake instead of COD/Assasins creed/whatever.

 

[esperandote]

snip

Update: It should be noted that the NPD Group counts game rentals and the sale of used games alongside what it refers to as "other monetization methods." These methods, taken as a whole, have topped retail sales. Digital sales are a rapidly growing force in the industry, but that alone does not yet trump retail sales. We apologize for any confusion.

Alright, that was decievingdeceptive.

 

[Treblaine]

snip

Update: It should be noted that the NPD Group counts game rentals and the sale of used games alongside what it refers to as "other monetization methods." These methods, taken as a whole, have topped retail sales. Digital sales are a rapidly growing force in the industry, but that alone does not yet trump retail sales. We apologize for any confusion.

Alright, that was deceiving.

I think it's more dumb than deceptive:

Dumb on NPD's part to lump game rentals with digital downloads

And kinda dumb for the author not determining this before going to "print" though I do appreciate the speedy update (though it kinda renders the title null).

To think I used all these victory images:

Spoiler

maybe I should use this one instead:

 

[nothingspringstomind]

Hooray for the systematic removal of ownership being accepted by the consumer!

Saying that, i don't think anybody's actually owned anything for the past decade.

 

[Spud of Doom]

I still very much value the physical retail copies that I do have. I like digital distribution but only when it's much cheaper. In all other situations I would rather have the case sitting on a shelf or something.