2014 Marks a Slump in Video Game Sales on Discs

We have witnessed the huge releases of video games in 2014, such as Watchdogs, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Grand Theft Auto V, Assassin's Creed: Unity, and Dragon Age: Inquisition. The new hardware - PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Wii U - have been swept off the shelves in stores into the hands of players everywhere, especially this past holiday season. Call of Duty was the top selling game in December, with Grand Theft V being second and Madden 15 being third.

Apparently, in the month of December, US sales of video games on disc format fell to $1.28 billion, which was a decrease since December of 2013, but the decrease was not as large as in the previous years. Though a lot of consoles sold over the holidays, the sales of both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One fell in December 2014 to $1.31 billion, which was down 4% from December 2013. For the year of 2014, US sales of video games on disc format was $5.47 billion, which was a decrease of 14% since the previous year, but the sales of consoles jumped to $5.07 billion, a 20% increase. However, the sales of discs are dropping an insane amount, partially due to Miscroft and Sony selling consoles with games as bundles. Another reason? Players are buying these games used from Amazon and GameStop. With so many broken games being released, people are becoming more skepticle about pre-orders and instead are more determined to buy the game used or when the game is on sale.

Additionally, there is also a rise in digital sales. In online stores, like Sony's PSN store and Steam, people spent $1.2 billion on digital goods for the month of December, which is an 11% increase from the same period in 2013.

So it appears that people are adopting digital games more than ever, especially with the constant sales that are happening on the online stores. After all, one can never get enough Steam sales. However, is this a sign that discs are going the way of the dodo? Personally, I do like to have discs, because I can always resell them if I don't care for the game or if I no longer want to keep the game. Once you buy a digital game, you're stuck with said game, even if you dislike the game.

Well, I guess we will see what the future has in store for disc sales. But for now, we have a ton of releases to look forward to in 2015, such as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.