NPD: US digital sales total $1.4 billion in Q3

Don't believe this.  The NPD has no idea how much games sell digitally because most publishers (read: Valve) don't tell them.

I would love to see the sources of all that data and what's included where.  Unfortunately NPD keep a lot of that info locked up tighter than Ft Knox.  Apparently a subscription to their actual full reports is stupidly expensive.  Makes me sad panda.

...All those poor uninformed saps, throwing money down on a purchase they will lose once their HDD needs to be reformatted from viruses and so on...Criminal.

Next headline shocker "NPD finds missing 14 million gamers (or whatever number it was).

But the question is if this factors in all the digital distrubution platforms (steam as far as I am aware does not release sales data). What about subscription based services like World of Warcraft (you can have a rough calculation here)? And free to play games with microtransactions? Strongly doubt it and companies like Riot (LoL) are making a killing.

I doubt NPD even with the digital data shows the whole picture on the PC.

Yep, sure looks to me as though the industry is on a serious decline. Man, I hate skeptics and analysts who are nothing more than talking heads. There is one bad thing about this, at least to me. That would be that this will make a stronger case for the all digital future.

Long live Steam. Best thing ever.

Not a shock.

I'm a PC gamer with rather retro (5th and 6th gen) tastes. GOG, Steam and Gamersgate have become a way of life for me. Aside from a few GBA and DS games, I haven't bought a physical copy of a game in years.

I really don't like AAA games that keep trying to sell its DLC. Why can't games be made completely full, then make another sequel or prequel? Most games these days are garbage anyway.

But long live Mr. Hideo Kojima.

All those add-ons and DLC add up pretty quickly when you have millions of gamers buying stuff every day. I'm not surprised. Too bad there's no resell value in DD games.

digital distribution is on the rise people time to get with the times i welcome the days without that plastic box but thats just me.

Maybe we can stop hearing about how PC sales are next to none when they look at only retail physical copies sold.

95% of the games I buy are digital. I buy them this way because it is by far the cheapest way to buy them. Getting brand new games on preorder for close to 40% off is something I have only found through digital sales. No one matches the Steam sales. GreenManGaming and Amazon get pretty good deals also, much better than physical copies even if buying used (which doesn't get developers money.)

I am glad that NPD finally did research on digital sales.  Just like many had anticipated including myself, the growth of digital sales offset the decrease of retail sales.  This should shut up the "gaming is deaaaaaad!" doom-mongers.

Eh, it's just NPD.

...wait, what...people still rent games?