Activision's Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare recorded the highest grossing console games of 2015 [Courtesy of Activision]
Last year, worldwide digital games market totaled U.S$ 61 billion across all platforms. It’s up 8 percent year-over-year. Boosted by the sales in the holiday season, total sales reached a record high in 2015.
According to “Superdata”, an analyst group specialized in games and playable media, among the digital sales of games, digital console games showed the biggest jump and were up 34 percent, but it was one of the smaller categories totaling at $4 billion.
In terms of dollar sales, mobile games earned $25.8 billion last year, up 10% from 2014. The Superdata reported that as more consumers are adopting digitally distributed games and free-to-play, mobile games’ sales figures points toward a shift in the industry.
World’s games market mainly divides into two. The package market, which consumers buy packages of games that are in physical forms such as DVDs, Blu-ray discs, and CD. The digital market, which the customers download games on to their storage devices installed on PCs, smartphones, and consoles.
When digital downloads of games were first introduced in the early 2000’s, it was not as popular as now, due to slow internet connections and consumers preferred to keep the packages as a collection. But in last few years, digital downloads increased in numbers back by faster internet connections and consumers’ will to play the latest games as fast as possible straight after releases.
A boost of digital games download also brought positive side effects to the industry. For indie game creators, it was almost impossible to distribute game packages due to manufacturing costs and lack of distribution methods. But with the digital games download available in most platforms, indie game creators can easily sell their creations to consumers regardless of time and space.
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reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
