Gamestop announced that new game sales have plummeted 9.3% during the last quarter. According to them, games like Halo 5: Guardians, Star Wars: Battlefront and Assassins Creed: Syndicate failed to meet expectations.
Gamestop was quick to dismiss the factor of Digital Game downloads taking a bigger chunk of the market and that they’ve seen a disconnect between the $400 Million first week sales number Microsoft announced and what they’ve been seeing in store. According to NPD, Halo 5: Guardians managed to rake in $119 Million in physical sales in the US alone.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 managed to reach Gamestop’s expectations. However it’s not surprising as the majority of Call of Duty sales have been physical. Call of Duty haven’t managed to crack the Top 20, let alone the Top 10 in top Xbox One digital game sales in the last month it was released (according to Xbox) and is already on sale with Deals with Gold.
It’s no surprise that digital game sales are growing, as gamers would rather opt for this instead of having physical games taking up space. Halo 5: Guardians was the best selling digital Xbox game in the history of the Xbox Store, and it seems Gamestop didn’t quite get why it couldn’t cash in. Star Wars: Battlefront is also the top downloaded digital title on Xbox Live currently, which means Gamestop is losing a lot of sales thanks to EA Access.
It’s a trend, and it seems Gamestop will have to adapt to this changing landscape. Fast.
