hiska-kun said:
Farsala said:
I realize it is smaller, but retail stores collapsing isn't solely due to the market, digital sales take away a lot from these retail exclusive stores like COMG!
For example: Gamestop is putting more of their focus into Publishing rather then be an entirely retail store.
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Digital sales in Japan aren't that big than in the west. In Japan there're still some cultural factors than makes japanese people to choose retail over digital. The example than you gave before, the music CD, are still a strong market in Japan. For example Tsutaya is a DVD and CD store, that also sells games, but the main business are DVDs (and blue-ray) and CDs, games come after.
One of the reason of the strong retail market is because the used market takes a big role in Japan. A lot of people tends to sell their games when they finished, and use the money earned to buy the next one.
The times that we see high digital ratios of japanese games, most of the times have strong reasons behind. The two more important are:
- Online play focused games. If the game is going to be played mostly online and also there's the intention of purchase extras online, it could be more convenient to buy the game digital.
- Stock problems, high retail sell-through. Obviously if a person can't find a copy of the game at stores, instead of waiting for new shipments, there's the digital version as an option. Games with high sell-through tend to have better digital ratios.
If course digital sales will keep growing, in Japan too. But the main reason of the contraction isn't digital, and the effect they have is still low.
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Digital sales started out slow with 7th gen as well. It might be a shock to retailers the growth factor of digital.
In Japan I imagine digital sales for PS3 were like 5% while in late gen it became ~10%. Now PS4 is looking at 15-25%. With some games having a lot more then others.
In US I estimate PS3 had like 10% and grew to 20%. Most western companies estimate full game downloads for PS4 as 20-30%+.
I really do think the PS4's surprising amount of digital sales have thrown Japanese retailers a curveball. And since those gaming retail stores are massive 6 story buildings with multiple floors for different physical products, their gaming sections become less relevant.
Of course I agree that the market is extremely bad anyways with the recent week in May being the worst in so many years.
Edit: And the majority of the market is handhelds 3DS and vita with very little digital sales, but they are now in freefall. It is definitely time for new handhelds and we might only get one.
