Retail and digital PC sales almost equal
In North America.
US PC game digital downloads are reaching parity with in-store purchases, NPD Group says.
In 2009, 21.3 million PC games were downloaded in the US, versus 23.5 million purchased at retail.
Physical retail sales of PC games experienced a year-over-year revenue decline in 2009, but it was still slightly larger than PC digital download sales on a unit basis, NPD said.
So, where are gamers downloading their games from?
NPD listed the top five "frontline" digital retailers for 2009, based on unit percentage share. In at number one was Steampowered.com, followed by Direct2drive.com, Blizzard.com, EA.com and Worldofwarcraft.com. Guess this means Blizzard's games are popular, then.
The top five casual digital retailers are Bigfishgames.com, Pogo.com, Gamehouse.com, iWin.com and Realarcade.com. Frontline digital retailers increased their share of the PC full-game digital download market in the second half of 2009, at the expense of the casual digital retailers, according to NPD.