Physical game sales are starting to dwindle as Capcom stated in a shareholders' meeting that 80% of their games sold were bought digitally. The Japanese publisher's next goal is to grow that number to 90%.
To put these numbers into context, Capcom's digital sales last year were at 53.3% - that's a huge leap. And while that might be alarming to physical game collectors out there, Capcom still seems to be dedicated to brick-and-mortar sales. "While it ultimately depends on how our customers behave going forward," Capcom says, "for the time being, we are promoting our digital strategy with an objective of 90%, since there are some customers who prefer to own discs."
From what the GamesIndustry report has provided, Capcom didn't give the public a specific time frame on how this data was collected. On the other hand, with more people stuck at home due to the Coronavirus outbreak, the digital numbers may be related to this phenomenon. There was also more of an interest in video games as a lot of the working force suddenly had more free time on their hands. According to the NPD (via The Washington Post), there was a 35% increase in games sales year-over-year in March 2020. In April, that number grew to 73.3%, breaking records for that month.
A Capcom game that released deep into the pandemic was Resident Evil 3, which sold over 2 million copies in the span of five days. This caused the survival horror series to sell more than 100 million units in its lifetime.
This news makes it clear that we are moving towards a digital future, and perhaps the pandemic has made buying games in a digital format a new norm. Gamers now don't have to wait for their anticipated title to be released in stores at 10 AM; they can just pre-load it on their consoles and have it ready to play the night before.
In addition, the PlayStation 5 will be launching with a digital-only edition that is speculated to be sold at a cheaper price. On the Xbox side, Microsoft's streaming service XCloud and Xbox Game Pass is changing the game. XCloud allows gamers to stream AAA games to their mobile devices, and Xbox Game Pass has all upcoming Microsoft first-party titles available on Day 1.
Capcom have a few releases coming up, like the terrifying Resident Evil: Village and the intriguing Kojima-esque Pragmata, but we don't know anything else about the company's next-generation plans. We will see if Capcom's optimistic 90% digital goal will become a reality as the year rolls on.
Source: GamesIndustry