Digital sales break £1bn barrier

More than £1bn was spent on downloaded films, music and games in 2012, the highest annual total.

Sales increased 11.4% from 2011, meaning that a quarter of the entertainment market is now digital.

But figures released later by entertainment retailers will also show a big drop in physical sales - more bad news for high street shops.

Sales of CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray and video games fell by 17.6% in 2011 although they still make up most of the market.

Kim Bayley, director general of the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), which will release the figures, said that breaking the £1bn barrier was an "incredible achievement" for retailers.

"This reflects their huge investment in new and innovative services - which means you can buy music, video and games literally at any time of the day and wherever you are.

"At the same time I suspect that many people will be surprised to learn just how resilient the physical business still is - with three-quarters of entertainment sales still on disc.

"Downloads offer convenience and portability, but people still seem to value the quality and tangibility of a physical product."

Geoff Taylor from UK music industry body the British Phonographic Industry credited the Jubilee and London 2012 Olympic Games for showcasing British music around the world and driving up sales.

"But market conditions at home remained difficult and pressure on the 'leisure wallet' impacted music sales on the high street," he added.

"The quality of our music and digital innovation by UK labels means we have excellent potential for domestic growth and to increase our share of the global music market.

"We hope government will recognise the potential of digital music to contribute to economic recovery and provide more active support in 2013."

More than half of the digital sales went on video games, which grew 8% to £552m.

Films and music had a smaller share of the digital market but sharper growth - downloaded films up by 20% and music by 15%.

BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones said: "The entertainment industry has been struggling to adapt to the digital age.

"And while consumers are now paying for downloads, that's not making up for the rapid fall in high street sales."

Sales of video games in shops were particularly badly hit, with retailers blaming a lack of compelling new titles, he added.

Yeah thats why I posted it.

Just seems so unreal and it hasnt really taken off yet.

Nope but in november the top 6 vita games would have made it into the ps3 top 10 (in pal regions). So either ps3 sells bad digitally or the vita pulls some nice numbers... I'd like to belive the second (might just as well be the first though).

source (it's in the reply to comment 65): http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2012/12/06/playstation-store-pal-charts-november-2012/comment-page-2/#comments 

I'd really like to have some numbres because i feel like most of these digital sales in the video game department come from PC or might even be iOS and Android games.

btw do we have numbres on how big the iOS/Android game market is? I've read somewhere that epic made more money from infinity blade than Gears so it might be quite big? (or just way lower production costs)

With the digital bundles it's surely above 11m already. Without any digital sales included.
I doubt any console or handheld game made it over 1m digitally, though for big games like Halo and CoD I could imagine a few 100k.

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=152356&page=1 

The Vita would most likely still only have 3 titles on the list with a chance of having 4-6.

Number 100 on the chart Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter games sold 50k. 

Number 90 sold 60k. LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes

Three Vita games made the list, Assassin's Creed, Black Ops, and littlebigplanet.

The only other Vita game that sold over 25k are Uncharted Golden Abyss, NFL 2013, and Need for Speed Most Wanted. Heck I can't even find any more that sold over 20k.

Unless you think that there are 5-10 vita games that sold 300%+ more digital copies than physical copies. But personally I don't think digital sales are that high. Even 50% is stretching it.

Good 2 see Digital sales going strong and id say there only going 2 get better.

I wonder if that includes things like micro-transactions and subscription services. Or is it just up front A La Carte purchases...

Also the film industry really needs to get it's act together and create a viable digital business model. 

Thing is the vast majority of PS360 games aren't available digitally on launch and that's where most sales are coming from.
Usually they are added to the online store around 6 months later.

So they surely won't have a 80/20 (retail/digital) split.

And with that link even the newest Animal Crossing won't make it most likely to 1m digitally.

Let me remind you that when gravity rush hit 100k in japan, it had sold 70k phisically, the rest was digital