Kowen, we may disagree a lot of times, but I don't take you for a liar.

And sure digital sales are increasing... but a jump from 20 to 50% in one year seems a small streach don't you think?

I just find strange to accept to pay the same amount without box, art and all the other things to keep on shelves. I accept that even though your evidence isn't universal truth it's applicable, but not sure how much of the collectors would choose that, perhaps you aren't a collector, just a very passionated fan? Because my collector side makes me keep physical things orderly for when I want to look at them.

Didn't open the speach... but wasn't the citing MS source?

And of course their spin could be on considering 35% digital rate in the same "neighbourhood" as 20-25%... which would in this case give very different numbers... even thought it's just 10-15 percentual points, it would be 40-75% increase, which is massive.

We can't be sure.

I hope we can all agree that digital is growing at a really good rate and will continue to grow. The question is: Will games like Halo, Battlefront and such continue that trend or will they cause digital sales to lay flat YOY? We can probably all agree (I hope) that they will continue the growth of digital sales, but the question is how much it has grown?

Yeap there is no denial about that.

EA said digital sales growed 27% from last year to this year on consoles reaching ~20% and the projections are to reach 40% in 4 years... so at the end of this generation digital will be close to half of the sales.

BTW next year publishers will shares the digital ration and increased YoY... so it is not hard to know how it is growing.

Who knows. Idk anyone who bought physical. I mean you have the game before it comes out and you can play well before midnight. Already have the patch downloaded and everything. Just makes sense.

I've 4 friends who got halo 5 and all 3 got it at retail.  My anecdotal evidence suggests 100% retail.  

In reality the only thing driving digital higher for Halo 5 then other AAA retail releases is the digital copy in the bundle.  Sadly these digital copies are counted as sales on chart track UK,  media create Japan, NPD USA and Vgchartz.  So they can't be added on to the numbers. 

Gamestop ceo is in a position to find these things out much better than a random analyst. And if digital really was higher than 25% not including bundled digital Microsoft would be shouting from the rooftops.  They went to the bother of including hardware in their halo sales PR they'd definitely mention an extremely high digital sales ratio to help off set the gigantic retail decline in the series. 

But they didn't and we all know because halo is nothing special and doesn't get a digital ratio higher than other big AAA games.  People need to accept the decline and just move on.  Big franchises don't stay at the top forever.  Sales aren't bad,  just bad for Halos former standards. 

I have said it before and will say it again I have no doubt that XB does better for most games in digital sales ratios than other consoles... But even better when it comes to a franchise like halo... Their customer profile and succes with the xbl platform or online service in general is enough that I could bet my balls on it without too much worries...

Don't forget Sony is a hardware company they know how to push that... MS is a software slash service company first and they know how to push it way better than Sony.... That being said halo 5 underperformed... Bit probably did more like 30 to 40% DD than 20 to 25% if you add bundles it probably gets close to 50%

What do you have to base this on?

From what I can tell, the PS Store card hold the top 3 bestsellers spots for the majority of the year with Xbox store cards scattered further way down the list.

Check this months best sellers and there are 4 store cards in the to 10 ($10, $20, $50 & $60) while the first Xbox card is at 33rd ($10) with the next way down at 53rd.

Of course not, the digital attatch rate is 150%!

So some people are still hanging on digital sales with the hope that halo 5 sales haven't under performed or sold below expectations compare to its predecessors. Guys it doesn't matter how you slice it, even if the game sold very well, it's in fact below expectations.

First week WW sales:
halo 3: 3.81
halo 4: 3.66

The numbers that we got from NPD and UK are:

US: 935k with bundles
Uk: 150k
Total: 1,085m

If vgchartz estimate is close to real numbers at retail, that means that the rest of the world numbers (countries that xb1 has barely userbase) are:

1.5m-1.085m=415k for the rest of the world

I am having a hard time believing the rest of the world numbers considering xb1 userbase elsewhere but I guess those numbers comes from the 28% ratio allocated to those countries based on prior halo's. Assuming 1.5m is in fact what halo 5 sold FW at retail WW

1.5m * 1.20 (20%)= 1.8m
1.5m * 1.30 (30%)=1.95m ( digital ratio above average)
1.5m * 1.40 (40%)=2.1m (way above average)
1.5m * 1.45 (45%)=2.18m (way way above average)
1.5m * 1.50 (50%)=2.25m (unreasonable)

It doesn't matter how you slice it, halo 5 sold way less than halo 3 and halo 4 FW. Sure halo 3 had more days in their first NPD but if you allocate somes sales to cover for those days, it still doesn't make up for the difference. Waiting for any MS numbers regarding to digital sales is a waste of time because everyone know it's not gonna happen. When there are numbers unfavorable that can be compare with other numbers, MS have a tendency of hiding those numbers (I'm looking at you xb1) so let leave it at halo 5 sold very well but it's not what it used to be and move on.