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US Sales: 2024 Digital Shares for Switch are 53%, PS5 78%, and XBS 91%

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This is specifically looking at games that share digital sales, so any publisher (like Nintendo) that doesn't share digital is not included, as well as no digital only games that aren't available at retail.

Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social)

Alright, let's chat digital video game sales. For those titles which Circana has both physical & digital tracking (excluding all titles without both physical AND digital sales in the period), we are seeing a bit of a slowdown in the US dollar share growth rate of digital. Cont...
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Mat Piscatella
‪@matpiscatella.bsky.social‬

Alright, let's chat digital video game sales. For those titles which Circana has both physical & digital tracking (excluding all titles without both physical AND digital sales in the period), we are seeing a bit of a slowdown in the US dollar share growth rate of digital.

For the Jan-Aug period, for all titles with both physical and digital sales tracking, 53% of Switch software sales were done digitally compared to 52% in the same period last year.PS5 is now 78% digital vs 75% digital last year.91% of XBS software was done digitally this year vs 90% last year.
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January to August 2023 digital share
XBS: 90%
PS5: 75%
NSW: 52%

January to August 2024 digital share
XBS: 91%
PS5: 78%
NSW: 53%
 
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"For all titles with both physical and digital sales tracking".

So no digital only games and no in-game purchases? The digital share is really high.
 
Lelouch0612 said:
Great to have that kind of insight!

Thats expected when you factor in the amount of units sold coming from digital promotions.

Don't use those ratios for new releases obviously.
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Bernd Lauert said:
Do I understand this correctly, is this revenue shares? Or unit shares?
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tentacle-tropes said:
Look like unit shares from what I can find.
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This is always revenue with Circana unless stated otherwise.
(And on his first post he said "US dollar")
 
I wonder what is the overall digital share when Switch + PS + Xbox + PC combined. Must be super high.
 
If this data is revenue-based (which it likely is) then the split in units must favor digital even more. But damn, physical is DEAD on Xbox.
 
Next Xbox should be 100% digital. PS6 probably will be like PS5 Pro, disc drive will be an add-on.
 
So for Switch no first party games. Is the digital share of first party higher or lower than third party? Can we estimate that?
 
Yomi said:
So for Switch no first party games. Is the digital share of first party higher or lower than third party? Can we estimate that?
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My guess would be there’s some mild fluctuation there, but nothing that would grossly change the percentage by more than a few percentiles either way. The buying behaviour of customers for the platform generally seems pretty clearly deciphered here and it would be highly likely the same behaviour carries over to Nintendo’s own products.
 
great data. in keeping with mat trying to pump his bluesky account lol.

looks like maybe a digital plateau is reached. however, as the ps/xbox (guess you cant call them the hd twins as differentiator anymore) go more and more to sales of digital only consoles, that should increase.
 
I will say, with the digital figures for XBS being what it is, the retail space that platform commands at a place like a Walmart is absolutely ridiculous and I cannot imagine that kind of thing is long for this world, no matter what slotting fees MS might be paying.
 
Yeah, it is really important to highlight that this is stretched over several months which favors digital in a couple of ways.

Digital is always available unlike physical which rotates out of the inventory of brick and mortar shops.

Digital discounts appear faster after release than in the past and are unrestricted in quantity. A store will discount physical games to clear stock and be done with it.

The percentage makes sense and we more or less already knew that. Publishers like Capcom already reported very high digital adoption rates through their catalog sales.

I find the style of the reporting oftentimes rather unfortunate, because people will run with the headline and assume/be convinced that this represents the physical/digital split on release/release month.

The people with data and power should know that they create a certain narrative that is hard to be contained or to be educated against.
 
I think the 90% share from Xbox is a pretty clear consequence of their market strategy. They clearly want to be a digital hub that crosses the arbitrary lines of exclusivity (console or software medium). I don't think there's much more to read into than that.

The main question I have is whether the long-term strategy is viable. It clearly is in the aggregate; the industry is heading towards the exact business strategy that Microsoft is gunning for. The big question is whether or not it is viable for Xbox. I think the brand has taken a massive hit this generation.
 
This makes sense. So much sales come from back catalog digital sales that are deeply discounted. Retail space just does not see those type of deals anymore, your normal deals tend to pop up (15%) or $20 off sometimes amazon has great deals but the barging bin days or heavy clearance sales in retail spaces are so rare to see which makes sense because obviously retailers aren't ordering a ton of physical copies but I've seen triple AAA games from any genre down to like $3.99 on PSN at times.
 
The couple of times I go into a brick and mortar store the Xbox section is either nonexistent or all digital.
 
I really hope Xbox & PlayStation support physical media, even if I have to buy a disc drive separately. There's always going to be a lot of holdouts who refuse to go all or even mostly digital. The last digital game I paid money for was Blaster Master Zero back when the Switch launched. Looks like Nintendo is safe for physical for now, though.

The music industry saw physical sales crater after the turn of the century, but they never forced digital on everyone. Albums are still released on CD and/or vinyl, and physical music didn't decline forever. According to RIAA data, physical albums bounced back in a bit in the U.S. in 2021 (a good bit higher than 2018 levels but lower than 2017) and remaining stable since, with mid-year unit sales this year 9.1% year-over-year. If the video games industry outright forces digital even though music (and film, so far) never did, that would be a dick move, and the end of my support for them.
 
Shadow of the Void said:
I really hope Xbox & PlayStation support physical media, even if I have to buy a disc drive separately. There's always going to be a lot of holdouts who refuse to go all or even mostly digital. The last digital game I paid money for was Blaster Master Zero back when the Switch launched. Looks like Nintendo is safe for physical for now, though.

The music industry saw physical sales crater after the turn of the century, but they never forced digital on everyone. Albums are still released on CD and/or vinyl, and physical music didn't decline forever. According to RIAA data, physical albums bounced back in a bit in the U.S. in 2021 (a good bit higher than 2018 levels but lower than 2017) and remaining stable since, with mid-year unit sales this year 9.1% year-over-year. If the video games industry outright forces digital even though music (and film, so far) never did, that would be a dick move, and the end of my support for them.
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Physical sales would have to absolutely crater for that to become a possibility. Even something like a 5-10% split would still be too high for them to just drop it completely.
 
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