Lafiel said:
That and shelve space. Brick & mortar retailers will always prioritize new releases which leads to a downward spiral for older games as they get less space which makes them less visible to customers resulting in less sales and hence less shelve space. Only a few evergreen titles manage to escape this downward spiral for several years. |
At first physical and digital are about the same price. Yet retail hangs on to full price much longer and doesn't discount as much as digital when prices get lowered. So you have the second hand sales taking new sales away, while digital is doing the same and is competing with the second hand sales, both under pricing the new physical copies.
Assuming the height of the bars represent sales numbers, some crude photoshopping makes it look like this combined
As they said before the game came out, the budget wouldn't be possible without launching it on consoles as well. It also holds onto a higher price much longer on consoles so I guess the revenue from consoles is even bigger than the sales split. PC sales and digital pick up with big discounts while physical and consoles bring in the big money early on.
