Digital made up over 90% of Capcom's game sales for the past 4 quarters in a row

Digital has been a significant driver for Capcom's game sales, new data and analytics show.

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Capcom recently reported its Q1'FY24 results, showing a reduction in all major metrics: Net sales were down by -44%, operating income was also down by -48%, and total game unit sales were down by around -30% year-over-year.

Charting the game sales trends yielded interesting results. According to Capcom's latest financial report, the company is selling substantially more digital copies of its games than it is physical. The reasoning for this is quite simple: Prices of games sold on digital stores like the PlayStation Store, Microsoft Store, and Steam can more easily be discounted and adjusted. Capcom relies strongly on heavy discounts and price reductions of its games in order to sell more copies, and the publisher has routinely marked down game prices over various quarters like clockwork in order to spark game sales. So far, the plan has worked incredibly well for Capcom.

Taking a closer look at the digital vs physical percentage share of Capcom's game sales underlines this point.

According to data provided by Capcom and charted by us, digital game sales have accounted for over 90% of the decades-old Japanese company's total game unit sales for the past 4 consecutive quarters.

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• Q2'23 - 92% digital, 8% physical, 9.1 million games sold
• Q3'23 - 93% digital, 7% physical, 10 million games sold
• Q4'23 - 99% digital, 1% physical, 17.4 million games sold
• Q1'24 - 93% digital, 7% physical, 9.5 million games sold

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It should be noted that this is not indicative that Capcom will stop selling its games in physical retail markets, or that it will stop shipping physical game discs to e-tailers like Amazon. Far from it--Capcom has insisted that it will not give up on physical media, and the unit sales support this trend.

Forgoing physical sales would mean Capcom would miss out on millions of game sales a year, and that's the opposite of their current plan, as Capcom still wants to achieve its lofty goal of selling 100 million games on an annual basis.