The Entertainment Software Assosiation (ESA) along with partners such as Microsoft, Tencent and others released their 2015 Software sales breakdown for 2015. After calling out the NPD reports as ‘outdated’, they teamed up with NPD to paint a better picture of the industry as a whole, by including Physical, Digital and Mobile games in the calculations.
With Digital becoming an ever popular option for gamers, NPD noted that the industry was in decline due to dropping sales, which the ESA disputed. According to them, the industry increased its revenue from $22.4 Billion in 2014, to $23.5 Billion in 2015 thanks to an increase in digital downloads.
“The ubiquitous nature of playing and purchasing video games makes it more important than ever to track these activities accurately,” said Joanne Hageman, president at the NPD Group. “The industry’s sales performance helped to make 2015 a banner year for video games; and we anticipate continued growth in multiple industry sectors for 2016.”
It’s great to see how digital distribution is starting to eat into the physical game distribution model. On PC for example, physical game sales are antiquated since gamers on that platform have a multitude of options including the new Windows 10 store, Origin and U-Play.
The ESA didn’t break down the total sales chart between platforms.
