With digital delivery being the current trend, more and more gamers will be making digital purchases on next-gen consoles according to a study by Piers Harding-Rolls, Head of Games at IHS.
His study forecast that by 2017, digitally distributed games and gaming services will represent a 34 percent share of total games spend across the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The report also revealed that back in 2008, it was a mere 8 percent across the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Piers believes that publisher ambition to have their games digitally available is one of the reasons behind the increase. “Those titles that have already experimented with digital ‘day and date’ releases alongside boxed versions have enjoyed a small but growing digital share of total sales volume, but IHS predicts that by 2017 new releases could be enjoying up to 18% digital sales depending on geography,” he said in a press release sent to GamingBolt.
Piers also claims that the pricing model, discover-ability and accessibility of digital content will push digital sales. It’s no secret that both Sony and Microsoft are going digital in a big way with Gaikai and Azure cloud technology respectively. Valve has already seen great success with their digital distribution platform Steam, when they reached at all time high of 65 million users recently.
He further believes that “the shift to digital consumption coupled with lower up-front investment in console hardware design and custom components is expected to lay the foundation for stronger profitability for the platform holders across the next generation when compared to the PS3/Xbox 360 consoles.”
Interesting take. We will see how it pans out in the coming years.