Dial “D” For Digital
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
By Anita Frazier, Entertainment Industry Analyst Toys & Video Games
During some of my “kid-oriented” presentations, I will often talk about some of the things that we adults can still remember, but that kids of today have never been exposed to - like rotary-dialed phones or 8-track tapes. I was reminded of this recently when I had my car in for service and was given a loaner for the day, and the car actually had manual roll-down windows. My kids had no clue how to operate them, and a verbal explanation wouldn’t do - I had to visually demonstrate the hand-cranking method for them as they stared on in disbelief.
As the march toward all things digital moves steadily along, it almost seems inevitable to imagine a future, and maybe a not so distant one, where nearly all entertainment content would be distributed via digital methods, but is that reality? Even with the prevalence of various digital music acquisition sources, my colleagues here at NPD that cover the music industry tell me that physical purchases of music still account for a majority of music sales and now, our new Games Acquisition Monitor covers the entire content acquisition pie for the games industry - including physical, digital, rental, mobile, used and even games acquired by piracy. Sales of games content, for now, are still heavily dominated by physical purchases at retail. During Q3 of 2009, 86% of acquired content was in a physical format, and if you look at just content for console platforms, it’s 90% physical. So, while digital distribution of games content is an important consideration for the games industry, the role retail plays is vitally important to getting games into the hands of consumers.
Tags: content acquisition, entertainment content, games content, music sales
Entertainment, Video Games | Anita Frazier, Entertainment Industry Analyst Toys & Video Games | 
January 13, 2010 12:37 pm
Subscribe
