Australians continue to spend more money on video games year over year, with the industry now worth close to $3 billion dollars, new research shows.
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Comparing 2015 sales data to that of the previous year, the research released by the Interactive Games & Entertainment Association (IGEA) also shows that money spent on digital goods has finally surpassed money spent on packaged games, consoles and console accessories combined.
While hardware and software sales increased across the board, digital purchases were up 27 per cent to $1.589 billion, enough to eclipse the $1.243 billion in sales made at retail, a 2 per cent increase over 2014.
IGEA commissioned retail data from NPD Group and digital download data from Telsyte for its research.
Unsurprisingly, the biggest contributor to the total was mobile games, which are typically offered free or at a low price, but rack up millions of users and encourage frequent small purchases. However the most growth was seen in digital video game downloads and subscriptions, which combined with strong console sales seems to disprove predictions made in previous years that mobile would cannibalise the console and PC game business.
"The current generation of consoles have been adopted rapidly by Australians, highlighting that gaming culture has become well and truly mainstream [in recent years]," said IGEA chief executive Ron Curry.
"This has had a flow on effect to the increased sale of both packaged games and digital content."
Mr Curry said Australians were becoming "increasingly comfortable" paying for non-physical goods delivered instantly to their devices, be that full games or add-on content, but that traditional retail was by no means fading.
"There is still a strong appetite for traditional retail purchases, as Telsyte's research shows 39 per cent of consumers citing a preference for physical copies for gifting and to collect," he said.
NPD's data show the Sony PlayStation 4 accounted for 59 per cent of current-generation console sales in 2014, putting it in a strong position against the directly competing Microsoft Xbox One and Nintendo's Wii U, which was released a year prior to Sony's and Microsoft's machines.
Sales on the PlayStation 4 platform also accounted for 59 per cent of the entire current generation market value.
PlayStation Australia's Michael Ephraim said it was clear digital games were important to its success, and that the company makes its games available anywhere its customers want to get them.
"We are proud to offer a vast variety of content on the PlayStation Network (PSN) that includes everything from triple A blockbusters such as the highly anticipated Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, to great Australian pick-up-and-play titles such as Assault Android Cactus," he said.
He also points to initiatives like the PlayStation First program — which provides game development tools to Australian students — saying they demonstrate PlayStation's "full 360 approach" to digital games.
Like the IGEA, Mr Ephraim believes there's room in the industry for both strong digital and retail sales, pointing to the fact that many players buy full games on disc and supplement them with add-ons and smaller downloads available digitally.
"We also partner with our retailers to ensure they can sell PSN Cards," he said.
"This allows both parties to share the benefits of the digital games market."
