Part 6/9:
Ryan references a report from EA that states over 52% of console full game sales in the past 12 months were digital. Other major companies like Take-Two and Sony report similar figures, indicating that more than half of game sales are digital and that this proportion is only increasing for newer generations of consoles.
This shift has profound implications. If digital sales constitute roughly 50% of all game sales, then the physical sales of The Last of Us Part II—at 2.8 million digital copies—might be closer to the actual number of copies sold than raw physical figures alone suggest. Ryan hypothesizes that many physical copies remain unsold or returned—a potential overestimation by initial shipment figures, especially in light of current digital dominance.