14 DAY TRIAL // According to a recent analyst firm report, up to 92 percent of all game sales on the PC platforms are made through digital distribution, with retail accounting for less than 10 percent of total sales.
Based on a statement released by analyst firm DFC Intelligence, made to PCR Online, digital video game sales on PC amounted to a whopping 92 percent of all global sales on the platform in calendar year 2013, and the firm expects the figure to grow in coming years.
The firm also reported earlier this year that, in terms of revenue, the PC game market managed to surpass the console sector.
This is one way to account for the perceived low sales of blockbuster video games on the PC platform, and the lack of the platform's presence in weekly charts. The bad thing is that it will remain this way until the industry finds a proper way to track digital sales through Steam or the numerous other outlets that are in the business of selling PC game keys.
Publishers aren't known to cooperate with tracking companies, and even larger firms like NPD have only started tracking digital sales for a very short time, but it will certainly be interesting to see how the trend will change over the next few years.
Tracking of digital sales is expected to become commonplace over the next few years, as even the major players in the business, Microsoft and Sony, are currently doing their best to try and push for digital sales through their online stores, gradually cutting out retail outlets.
As digital sales are much harder to track without the ones in charge of operating the store fronts or the publishers releasing their numbers, we can only hope that Microsoft and Sony will start sharing internal figures for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One digital stores, once numbers start reaching similar levels to those currently in retail.
PC gaming began a pretty rapid transition to digital sales with the launch of Steam, Valve's digital distribution service, that in spite of some early resistance, went on to dominate the digital marketplace.
Various indie dev post-mortems reveal that the bulk of their sales comes through Steam and various bundles, mainly the ones set up by Humble Bundle, with other digital outlets producing generally negligible results.
Consoles are slowly catching up to the trend seen on PC, with a lot of sales and promotions for console games being featured for PlayStation and Xbox titles on their respective stores, but for the time being, retail sales still remain the main earner for console game makers.