Call of Duty Beaten - New Digital Sales Record for Consoles
The SuperData analytics group published a report on global digital distribution in March. Last month turned out to be exceptionally good for the market, with great results of Doom Eternal, Half-Life: Alyx and Animal Crossing. The latter production broke the first month's digital sales record for console titles, set by Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII.
If asked about the most important game of March, the gamers would probably point to either Doom Eternal or Half-Life Alyx. Indeed, both productions enjoyed considerable popularity, as indicated by the report of the SuperData analytics group on digital distribution in March. In the case of Valve's game, the success was moderate for an AAA production, but 860,000 copies is a record result for a VR title. In turn, the hellish FPS from id Software did more than three times better on launch than its predecessor, selling 3 million digital copies. At a similar time, Doom from 2016 reached only 967 thousand buyers.
However, the biggest winner was another production. Animal Crossing: New Horizons, debuting on the same day as Doom Eternal, reached a record 5 million copies sold in digital distribution in the first month after launch. Thus, the new release of charming life simulator series from Nintendo scored the best digital debut in the history of console games, beating Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII. The scale of this success can be proved by the fact that the latest Animal Crossing did as well in the first month as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and the Pokemon duo for Switch put together. In part, this may be due to the long wait for the next installment of the cycle, because - if you don't count spin-offs - the last game signed with the Animal Crossing logo debuted eight years ago on the portable Nintendo 3DS. However, according to SuperData, one of the reasons for this success may also be the fact that the combination of calm, relaxing gameplay and social features appealed to people forced to stay at home.
The success of the March releases is not the only visible influence of COVID-19 on the results of digital game distribution. No one will be surprised that this market segment proved to be very profitable last month. Compared to last year, revenue increased by 11%, from 9 billion to 10 billion dollars, which is the highest result ever. Spending on premium products (i.e. those requiring purchase) came out even better. In the case of PC, revenue from these types of titles was 56% better (up from $363 million to $536 million) than in a similar period a year ago, and on consoles - even 64% (to $1.5 billion from 883 million).
It's easy to guess the reasons for such a big growth. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic itself did not encourage people to leave the house, and subsequent orders from politicians forced us to go out as little as possible. This translated into many people spending more time playing, but also buying digital editions more often. This is confirmed by the report's mention that premium titles were most often bought by players from North America and Europe, where restrictions were tightened most in March.
The ranking of the ten best earning games of March on PCs, consoles and mobile devices. Source: SuperData...
This does not mean that players have forgotten about mobile productions. On the contrary, revenues from these games increased by 11% on a yearly basis to a total of $5.7 billion. For some titles, the increase in revenue is due to the facilitations provided by developers to enable fun without going outside. A great example is Pokemon GO. In March, Niantic, among other things, abolished the need to walk a certain distance to access PvP mode, shortened the time needed to hatch eggs and introduced weekly packs for a symbolic coin in virtual currency, including pokeballs. As a result, the revenues of mobile Pokemon increased by 18% (to $111 million) on a monthly basis. Since then, Niantic has continued to introduce further improvements, including the announced possibility to take part in remote raids.
