Players Become More Interested in Digital Downloads

A new study created by TNS/Today's Gamers and Gameindustry.com is showing that more and more gamers on all platforms are interested in digital distribution but that full-game distribution through the Internet is still in its infancy at the moment, with a majority of gamers still preferring to get their Modern Warfare 2 and Dragon Age: Origins in the traditional way, by getting into a store and picking up a copy.

Americans are the most interested in getting content via digital distribution and with online payment. 43% of those questioned who own gaming consoles are saying they get extra levels through digital download, with 40% sharing that they get paid content through it. At the opposite spectrum, only 13% of Germans do the same thing and the overall levels of digital-distribution penetration among Europeans seem to be significantly lower, hovering around 20%, with only the United Kingdom having a higher rate of adoption.

47% of American gamers that own the Nintendo Wii, the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3 are saying that they still buy their video games in a brick-and-mortar shop, while just 16% of them both pay and download their titles through a digital-distribution service, and 22% of the players pay online, but prefer getting the game as a physical medium. Again, America seems to be leading the world in adoption rates, with percentages in Europe dropping to under 10% for paying for games and getting them digitally.

When it comes to the PC, 23% of American players are buying and getting content through digital distribution, with rates in Europe also higher among PC gamers than among console players. It will be interesting to see how services like Impulse, GamersGate, Steam and Good Old Games will develop in the future and how they will further the digital-distribution cause.

Peter Warman, who is one of the researchers that worked on the report, says, “With the growing part of games being played and paid for online, a key way to monitor the complete games business is by asking consumers directly about their overall game behavior and spending taking the complete population as a starting point. An additional advantage of this approach is insight across all platforms as the traditional divide between the online casual and core console market has evaporated.”