According to the research data, $1.37B of that pie went to physical software purchases and $1.49B was spent on digital purchases, which included subscriptions, mobile games, and downloadable content.
One of the more eye-raising figures is that $559M was spent on used sales and rentals, which represents a major part of the market, and perhaps why Microsoft and Sony prefer to give the responsibility of trying to combat that to the publishers.
Digital purchases continue to grow, and analyst Liam Callahan noted, ”Digital spending fully offset the declines in physical format spend in Q1’13. There is strong growth in full-game downloads and downloadable add-on content sales across consoles, PCs, and portables, up a combined 25 percent in the first quarter of this year.”
The Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 will be focusing on day one digital purchases, so that amount of digital buying will increase, a bad sign for brick-and-mortar retailers.
