Last Updated on: 22nd November 2023, 05:56 am
Early festive sales peak for leading global pure play digital games retailer as the market shifts away from physical
Leading global pure play digital games retailer Green Man Gaming has enjoyed a Black Friday sales boom with revenues on digital PC and console games up more than 100%, and total units sold up 62% year on year. The average value per order was up 33% compared to the same time last year showing that there’s a real appetite to buy digital in the video games market. The success of this year’s Black Friday sale underlines the relentless rise in digital games over physical, also supported by recent reports from leading publishers of digital sales increasing significantly and industry research revealing a record year of sales.
As a truly international player with over five million customers in 195 countries, as expected, North America drove stellar results, with equally strong performances in Europe and Australasia. There were also a few surprises demonstrating the Global reach the retailer has with sales in Aruba and the Seychelles.
Perhaps inevitably, millennials lead the Black Friday charge for Green Man Gaming, with half of those snapping up a deal aged 25-34. Sales from female customers also showed an uplift compared to the same time last year.
Offering a hint at what this year’s big festive sellers might be, Green Man Gaming’s top ten games included solid performances from this year’s biggest releases including Fallout 76, Monster Hunter World, Far Cry 5, Call of Duty Black Ops 4, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Shadow of the Tomb Raider to name a few. Sony PlayStation titles such as Horizon Zero Dawn also performed extremely well in the sale. There was huge demand for fan favourites DRAGON QUEST XI Echoes of an Elusive Age and Nier Automata.
Part of the success of this year’s Black Friday sale was the company’s unique approach of crowdsourcing suggestions from its 5 million strong community to find their “most wanted” games. On the back of this, Green Man Gaming, in partnership with over 35 publishers, served up more than 200 games representing 150 game franchises at industry leading deals. Publishing partners included Activision, Bandai Namco, Bethesda, CCP, 2K Games, Ubisoft and more. The sale offered gamers fabulous deals across multiple platforms including PC, Mac and PlayStation.
The Black Friday sale ran from 00:01 UTC on Wednesday 21st November to 16:00 UTC on Tuesday 27th November – covering the crucial Black Friday and Cyber Monday retail-fest and the important weekend in between. Perhaps inevitably the busiest day overall was Black Friday itself, with the busiest hour 19:00 UTC on Thursday 22nd November – possibly pointing to the company’s huge US community grabbing a deal while Thanksgiving lunch was cooking.
Paul Sulyok, CEO and Founder of Green Man Gaming commented: “What a great result for our community with festive sales off with a bang for publishers and huge savings scooped up by customers on their most wanted games. These results are yet more evidence of the digital gaming bandwagon continuing to roll at huge pace globally in this exciting new era of how we game.”
GMG’s bumper Black Friday is reinforced by fresh research from SuperData revealing a record $4bn take on digital games over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday long weekend, up 14.3% compared to the same time in 2017, underlining the relentless rise in digital games over physical. These figures are further backed up by another survey from the same research house earlier in the year revealing that 42% of gamers buy most or all of their games digitally compared to 27% still buying physical titles.
