Everyone hear already knows that Digital Download is going to be the future for video gaming. Not everyone has internet or plugs their PC/Console to the interent, but the adpotion rates are ever increasing. One thing however, that everyone tends ignore is the gross profit margins per product.
Everything is not about sales, so stop throwing sales numbers left and right. =p Maybe people should start throwing profit margins.
Anyways, due to the PC Market already ahead in the game of digital downloads I will use that as a point of reference, espically Steam.
As quoted, "Steam's success i[s] attributed mainly to the convenience it offers players, as well as the competitive pricing for publishers. On Steam publishers earn a gross margin of 70 per cent, compared to the 30 per cent offered at retail stores. Source
In other words, publishers/developers gain a 70% return in profit, on average, when using digital download method of sale compared to retail. Not Hard to Understand.
Example: If a game sales One Million Copies Online ($60) and One Million Copies via Retail ($60), on average, the publisher will gain a $42,000,000 in profits from online compared to $18,000,000 from retail. Yup That is More Then Double!
This same method can be used to calcuate the average profit from a console game, due to most of them being retail sales, just add console licensing fees.
So here is the point, stop throwing sales numbers like they are the final say in everything and stop saying PC Gaming is dying because, it is way more profitable then many think. It can take almost double the console sales to match the profit margin of a PC Download.
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