91% of game industry revenue in 2020 was digital

The all-digital future has been here on PC for a number of years, and for better or worse, the rest of the industry is catching up. In 2020, 91% of the industry’s $174.9 billion USD revenue was made through digital sales, up from 79% in 2019.

The industry made $158 billion through digital spending across PC, console, and mobile titles, according to data collected from Newzoo for GamesIndustry.biz. $128.6 billion of that figure comes from in-game spending alone, so that puts full game digital sales at $29.4 billion. That’s just about double the $14.9 billion that physical games brought in for 2020.

Those figures are up from a total $148.8 billion for 2019. That year, PC and console revenue totalled $77.1 billion, $61 billion of which was digital. Mobile games are still the biggest slice of the industry’s pie, representing 46% of revenue in 2019, and 49% in 2020. (PC gaming made up 22% of revenue for 2020, and console gaming made up 29%.) Mobile is obviously all-digital, and a big part of why the figures disproportionately favour digital spending.

In the console market alone – where digital versus physical is still an actual consideration – 28% of revenue came from boxed retail sales. That’s far from a death knell for retail games, but the long period of nervous sweating for physical collectors collectors continues into 2021.