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crissindahouse on 12 August 2013
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ethomaz said:

crissindahouse said:

nahh, that is not true... everytime a company releases pc sales numbers it is pretty obvious that digital is higher as retail on pc. npd said already in 2010 that digital sales are higher as physical on pc for "full titles" which includes i think only games which are released also as physical copy.

That one? http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/30510/NPD_Digital_Trumps_Physical_In_PC_Software_Unit_Sales.php

NPD itself said they are not accurate because these numbers where extrapolated from third-party tracking via a survey... curious in this data is that retail generate more money than digital... weird because the survey only tracked full releases.

NPD is US only too.

i know that npd is us only lol. but that was from 2010, before all the steam and origin stuff really started to explode. and yes, physically made more revenue then because digital is cheaper. even on day one you have to pay less digitally on pc. not to talk about weeks later. not sure why it's weird that retail revenue was higher only including "full games releases" for you since that means they only compared full price titles and didn't take all the indie games and stuff in the calculation. 

but like i said, everytime a developer releases sales numbers for pc they are much higher digital. 

and how do you come to the conclusion that sim city sold "way more" at retail as digital? because bioshock sold more as simcity digital but digital+retail simcity is in front? that doesn't really mean that physical sales have to be much higher, only that it could be close.

as example it could be 1,1m for simcity and 900k for bioshock:

digital: bioshock 650k and simcity 600k 

retail: bioshock 250k and simcity  500k

which wouldn't really wonder me because you got a lot of free stuff when you preordered bioshock online (as example xcom). and don't forget that simcity is only on origin which means many people who buy digital did maybe not buy it only because they hate origin. many people who bought at retail did probably not even know about that until they started the game. so yeah, i think digital sales of simcity could be much more if it would be also on steam and other sites.

but that is only for the first weeks after release, we talk about full sales of games after years. maybe sales are very close at release but after some months i would bet with you that a lot more sales are digital.