You would think that with all the big titles coming out this fall, digital game spending last month would reach new levels of success. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case: digital spending was down compared to last year thanks to mobile and PC digital sales.
According to Superdata, consumers ended up spending around $9.05 billion dollars on digital video games last month, which is 1% down from last year. There was good news in the console front, with games like Red Dead Redemption 2, FIFA 19 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 helping score consoles a 13% increase.
But any gains that were made by consoles were offset by poor PC and Mobile sales, with both being down around 5%. This may be due to both Battlefield 5 and Fallout 76 experiencing relatively weaker launches than some may have expected.
When it comes to those two titles, Battlefield 5 sold 1.9 million units digitally while Fallout 76 was only slightly behind with 1.4 million across both consoles and PC. While the number looks high, it’s actually lower than previous games in those franchises did when they first launched.
Superdata also had some rough news regarding Destiny 2 sales. They were expecting the Forsaken DLC to add additional revenue to the game. While it did internally, the bloom is already off the rose. Engagement and monetization have already reverted back to the same levels before the DLC launched in September.
Rainbow Six also suffered from some bad news. While the game had a better than expected performance for most of 2018, additional revenue fell 33% in November, and that is after a decline in October. This may be due to other AAA titles coming along and drawing attention away.
League of Legends, Dungeon Fighter Online and Crossfire topped the PC charts for November, while Pokemon Go, Honor of Kings and Candy Crush Saga were the top three best selling mobile games of last month.
