Digital to make 95% of video game revenues in 2023, or $174.5 billion

Digital dominates 2023's annual spending in the video games market.

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GamesIndustry.biz's annual Year in Numbers datasheet has been published, revealing a dearth of information about the interactive entertainment's overall performance in 2023. The infograph, which includes a multitude of key metrics from the world's top analyst firms, underlines a trend that has been growing for some time: Digital gaming is taking over.

According to Newzoo, digital made up about 95% of 2023's video games revenues, or about $174.5 billion. This value includes both full game purchases made on storefronts like the PlayStation Store, Nintendo eShop, Steam, and the Xbox store, as well as in-game purchases and microtransaction spending across all platforms.

Typically, Newzoo's digital-physical split data is reserved for the firm's paid access models, so this tidbit arms us with more context.

We can actually take the figures a bit further, too. The report notes that console gaming is 83% digital and 17% physical. We use these percentages in tandem with the total console gaming market revenues ($53.2 billion) to backwards calculate how much money console gaming will make from digital vs physical sales throughout 2023.

Here's a quick breakdown:

• Console gaming - $53.2 billion (29% of worldwide spending)
• Physical - $9.04 billion (17% of console gaming revenue)
• Digital - $44.16 billion (83% of console gaming revenue)

It should be noted that mobile gaming is expected to make $90.4 billion, and is all-digital. Mobile is expected to make 49% of global game revenues and would account for 51% of total digital spending throughout 2023.

Companies like Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox have yet to publish their holiday earnings reports so there is no current basis for comparison on a Big 3 basis.