Sony's Shuhei Yoshida, speaking to our own Dale North, talked a bit about the role digital distribution plays in today's market, and specifically how it will relate to the PlayStation 4.

"Digital business is the faster growing business" he said. "We do not publish numbers, but every month it's almost a new record that the purchase on Vita is higher than the PS3, because everything is available [digitally]."

He goes on to note the role that brick and mortar will play as time goes on: "As the industry changes, I believe retailers will change their focus as well." This is already true for GameStop, who is pushing digital purchases like crazy and profiting from them.

What the future really holds -- we'll see. But I know a lot of people out there would not be happy with an entirely digital era.

http://www.destructoid.com/sony-digital-business-is-the-faster-growing-business--246237.phtml

Sony already stated that most Vita software is sold through digital.

There was a report a couple of months back, that 80% of the software sales are digital in Japan and a third everywhere else.

If only we had historic data on this going back to vita launch, that way we could have seen if the memory card price cut encouraged more people to buy digital. Personally I'm beginning to think that the 33% rule of thumb we got from Sony is now out of date and that it may be higher at the moment. For example, given that Killzone Mercenary is currently sitting at only 150k or so here on vgchartz, I think this could be the case because that game had pretty well populated multi servers (haven't played in a few weeks though), had a reasonably high profile for a vita profile (though I still think some people ignored it) and has been bundled extensively - surely with those things going for it should have sold much more, it just that those sales were often digital and of course couldn't be tracked

Germany (dunno about the rest of Europe) has a Vita Bundle with 10 games (some solid retail ones, some crappy ones) included which has been the best selling version of the Vita for some time now., So I guess such bundles  should account for a large number of these sales, because I'm pretty sure that these games aren't tracked seperately and a lot of people are probably satisfied with these games or might be disappointed with the system after playing them. The thing is that it is almost impossible to even find Vita games in media stores. They are not even trying to sell them anymore.

Digital sales are making VGC numbers more and more off for total sales. Animal Crossing: New Leaf is probably near 7m sold (physical and digital) while VGC has it listed at 5m physical copies sold. I wish VGC would update the numbers to include digital sales when companies release the figures in their reports.

I don't understand people excpect to small ip to sold well on a small install base.

Sony prices the digital versions bellow store price, so the savings are passed onto us. Digital is a good propostion on the Vita.

And despite the whole story of overpriced memory cards, you can store the games on your PS3 or PC and keep the ones you are playing on the card. Theres no need to buy those overpriced ones.

Sales would be better if there were more big games though. We have been promised that more stuff from Japan will come next year, and while niche i think it will make it worthwhile to many of the current owners wich are hardcore gamers.

Unfortunely developers are convinced that mobile phones and tablets are the shizzle, so they dont want to suppor the Vita OR the 3DS, while we are at it (except Japan). Terrible mobile fad of under 5 euros/dollars and f2p games that will never support quality gaming. Without the full support of the market, no system can not-struggle unless its a Nintendo system.

I bought 9 retail versions, but only kept 5 of them. I sold the other 4 when I got them per PS+ as digital version.

I also rented some retail versions each for a week.

Digital games on my memory cards:

21 "full" games (4 bought, 3 won, 14 PS+)
31 "small" PSN games (18 bought, 13 PS+)
16 PSP games (15 bought, 1 PS+)
16 PS1 games (16 bought)
9 PS Mobile games (3 bought, 6 free)
9 PS Minis (3 bought, 6 free)

The next full game will be Tearaway, haven't decided if retail or digital.

Killzone digital is 34,99€. Killzone physical is 39,99€.

I only bought Killzone physical. Other than that, I buy nothing at all for Vita. I just play what I get with Plus. And that's a lot, honestly.