Digital downloads are slowly but surely becoming the preferred form of game delivery even in the console gaming market, and one publisher that can attest to this trend is EA, one of the largest third party publishers on the market. Speaking during their fiscal call yesterday, EA revealed that almost half of all EA games purchased on consoles last year—47% to be specific—were digital purchases.
To be clear, this doesn’t include microtransactions or DLC. This is very specifically referencing “full game sales”, meaning EA is experiencing more and more people choosing to purchase its games digitally, a move that is better for it since it leads to better profits and no used game sales. EA also revealed that Battlefield 5 had a far better digital ratio than Star Wars Battlefront 2 had had, just a year earlier, as did FIFA 19 compared to FIFA 18.
This number flies in the face of earlier reports that Battlefield 5 had underperformed digitally, and also is in line with Ubisoft’s report that games such as Assassin’s Creed Odyssey saw about 45% of their sales come in as digital downloads. As mentioned already, slowly but surely, digital is taking over.
