![]() With the launch of cloud-gaming services like OnLive potentially bringing the number digital downloads up, and the further fragmenting of the casual games market potentially bringing those same numbers down, 2010 could turn out to be a roller coaster year for the PC downloads market. How well does the casual sector perform compared to frontline, for example? And how big of a lead does Big Fish Games have over Pogo? While it’s nice to see the estimated rankings, it’s hard to really interpret them without seeing the sales figures used to calculate them. Top 5 Casual Digital Retailers – 2009 (based on unit % share) Top 5 Frontline Digital Retailers -2009 (based on unit % share) The report further goes on to estimate ranks for top digital retailers in two categories, frontline (online services that sell games you can also buy in stores) and casual “This demonstrates how consumers can now experience casual types of games through myriad vehicles, broadening the competitive landscape.” “The popularity of social network gaming increased from Q3’09 to Q4’09 as 4.8 million more people played games on a social network in the U.S.,” said NPD game analyst Anita Frazier. However with a growing spectrum of options available to casual players, ranging from iPhone to Facebook, the casual PC downloads market has actually taken something of a hit. This may sound like quite the coup for casual games, an industry largely centered around digital content delivery. NPD also points out that retail sales of PC games took a sharp decline last year, declining to $538 million in 2009 – a 28% drop from their numbers in 2008. 21.3 million PC games were downloaded online via sites like Big Fish Games while 23.5 million were purchased in real world retail stores. The report reveals that the number of PC games sold via digital download fell just shy of reaching parity with their brick-and-mortar counterparts. Thanks to a recent study conducted by the NPD Group, it would seem as though those speculators finally have some data to back that assumption up. Many have speculated over the past few years that digital downloads of PC games would inevitably surpass their retail counterparts. ![]()
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