Worldwide digital game sales reached $8.3 billion across console, mobile and PC in September, up from $7.2 billion in September 2016. SuperData Research has released its monthly digital games report, highlighting the purchasing trends outside of physical copies sold.
The 15 percent growth for digital game sales was driven by a 25 percent jump in console digital revenue, thanks to new releases. This increase in console downloads more than offset a double-digit decline in pay-to-play and a significant drop in social revenue.
Destiny 2 Fulfills Its Destiny
Activision-Blizzard’s Destiny 2 broke the record for the fastest-selling digital console game in a given launch month, SuperData reports. The previous record holder was Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 in November 2015. Destiny 2 debuted at number one for console titles and it will be interesting to see how it impacts PC sales for October having launched on Tuesday.
“Destiny 2 is a hit, but not an unqualified one when compared to the first game,” SuperData senior analyst Carter Rogers told AListDaily. “First-month digital revenue is up substantially over Destiny 1 largely due to a greater share of players buying the game via download instead of disk. However, first-month total player numbers are actually down from Destiny 1, so the game’s marketing has not concretely expanded the audience. What has expanded the addressable audience is the game’s availability on PC, where there has been pent-up anticipation for Destiny since the first game’s launch.”
Established sports franchises FIFA and NBA 2K continue to expand their reach with new releases and show little signs of slowing down, noted the report. FIFA 18 console digital units came in significantly higher than FIFA 17 last September despite a later release date this year, while NBA 2K18 console sales also saw a healthy jump.
PC Battle Royale
League of Legends (LoL) held its top spot on the PC game charts for September, with Fantasy Westward Journey Online II and Dungeon Fighter Online holding their positions at numbers two and three, respectively.
Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) overtook World of Warcraft and Crossfire in revenue during September, continuing its dominance and worldwide impact with PC gamers. Selling around four million units, the popular battle royale game ascended one position from August to number four, pushing Crossfire down to number five.
Larian Studios’ Divinity: Original Sin 2 launched mid-September, but still sold an impressive 660,000 digital units on PC during its launch month. The RPG builds on the success of single player PC games such as Nier: Automata and Horizon Zero Dawn. Divinity: Original Sin 2 debuted at number eight for digital PC game revenue.
Mobile Musical Chairs
The top 10 mobile games for September is comprised of all the same titles from August—with one exception—but the games came in at different ranks.
Fantasy Westward Journey overtook Honour of Kings for the number one spot in September, while Clash Royale pushed its way four spots to number three. Monster Strike rose two spots to number four and Fate/Grand Order went from the bottom at number 10 in August to number five in September.
Pokémon GO, Niantic’s darling, didn’t make the top 10 in September after holding the number five spot in August.
Netmarble Games’ Lineage 2 Revolution jumped onto the global charts at number nine for mobile revenue. The online action role-playing game originally launched in South Korea in December 2016, earning $176 million its first month alone.
Gearing up for a launch in the West, Lineage 2 Revolution has been available for pre-registration since mid-September, and late-night host and comedian Conan O’Brien has been recruited for a major marketing push. O’Brien joined a livestream from Netmarble’s booth during TwitchCon this past weekend.
“We really hope this game will do well in the US and Europe,” Seungwon Lee, chief global officer of Netmarble Games Lee told GamesBeat. “We are being much more aggressive with this launch than we have been before for any other game.”
