2020 was certainly a big year for PlayStation. A large number of highly anticipated titles released on PS4 last year and were met with mostly favorable success. With the continued success of the newly launched PS5, it seems that PlayStation will only to continue to grow in popularity. However, it seems that PlayStation's continued success and popularity may lie in a newer, still-growing market.
As of last year, the PS4 sold the most games in console history at an impressive 1.577 billion units. The success of the console sales has certainly made a noticeable impact on the gaming market, but now according to Sony, most of those units sold were not actually physical sales, but rather digital purchases made off of the PlayStation Store.
Earlier today, Sony revealed the Consolidated Financial Results for the year 2020 and it showed that 65% of the total game sales were digital, which is a twelve percent increase from the year before. In total, 220 million games were downloaded out of the 338.9 million games that were sold. Obviously, the COVID-19 pandemic is likely responsible for the high increase of games purchased digitally, but also, other PlayStation services may have attributed to the massive increase in digital sales as well.
PlayStation Plus offers users free downloadable games every month just for subscribing to the service. Not to mention the more recent Play At Home Initiative, which gives any PlayStation user certain games for free. Given the ease of convenience and given how much game selection there is on the PlayStation Store, it makes sense as to why so many users opt to purchase games digitally nowadays. However, Sony has certainly taken notice of this trend and wishes to capitalize on it.
The fact that a digital-only version of the PS5 even exists clearly indicates the rise in popularity of purchasing games digitally. Though, for how popular digital games have become on PlayStation platforms, it did seem rather odd when Sony made the surprising announcement that it would be shutting down the PS Stores for the PS3, PS Vita, and PSP, only to go back on the announcement a few weeks later.
It's possible that Sony noticed the rise in digitally purchased games on the PS4, one of its most successful platforms currently in circulation, and opted to keep the PS3 and PS Vita stores open. In any case, it will be interesting to see how the purchase of digital games continue to influence PlayStation's current market. Physical game releases could be phased out altogether as a result, but that would certainly take a long time to occur, if it ever does.
