Global digital video games have increased in sales over the past few months as developers and publishers have found success with digital downloads. Thanks to games like No Man’s Sky and Pokémon Go, this year, gamers tended to spend more money on digital game downloads and micro-transactions. According to gaming intelligence firm SuperData Research (via Segmentnext), in August of 2016, digital game sales topped $6.1 billion across all platforms – an 11% increase for the year-to-year report, marking the fourth-straight month that digital sales have seen double-digit gains.
Digital console revenue saw an increase of 16% to $399 million, premium PC increased 21% to 401 million, free-to-play MMO was up 8% to $1.41 billion, and mobile was up %16 to $3.04 billion – Pokémon Go being the major factor in the increase. The only platforms that saw a decline was social gaming platforms like Facebook, which was down 4% to $604 million. MMO games like League of Legends and World of Warcraft, and first-person shooters like Overwatch, are at the forefront, but the recent release of No Man’s Sky and Pokémon Go this summer attracted a massive audience to the digital market in contrast to retailers.
According to Venturebeat, the gaming industry is currently a $99.6 billion business annually, and the balance of power is gradually shifting towards digital media and leaving behind physical media, i.e, CDs, cartridges, etc.
Summer is usually the time of the year where publishers see the strongest sales numbers, but the CEO of SuperData Research, Joost van Dreunen, has told CNBC that there’s a migration to full-game downloads that’s seen an acceleration this year. The month of August saw a quarter of downloads account for all full game sales, matching the record that was first set last October.
The gaming market continues to shift towards downloaded transactions and it will soon (if not already) become the industry standard.
Here are the games with the highest-grossing digital transactions across all three platforms (PC, consoles, and mobile devices):
PC
1. League of Legends
2. World of Warcraft
3. CrossFire
4. Dungeon Fighter Online
5. Overwatch
6. No Man’s Sky
7. World of Tanks
8. DOTA 2
9. Fantasy Westward Journey Online II
10. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
Consoles
1. Call of Duty: Black Ops III
2. No Man’s Sky
3. Grand Theft Auto V
4. FIFA 16
5. Madden NFL17
6. Tom Clancy’s The Division
7. Overwatch
8. Star Wars: Battlefront
9. Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End
10. Fallout 4
Mobile
1. Pokémon Go
2. Monster Strike
3. Mobile Strike
4. Clash of Clans
5. Game of War: Fire Age
6. Fantasy Westward Journey
7. Puzzle & Dragons
8. Clash Royale
9. Candy Crush Saga
10. Clash of Kings