Steam is on Top for Digital Sales, but Epic Games Store is Gaining Traction
To look at the potential for streaming games, DFC Intelligence commissioned a quick survey of 1,000 gamers. We used our panel of younger core gamers from a global pool (not including Asia). Among the many questions, we asked was where consumers buy digital games. Epic Games Store clearly has strong potential based on the initial results.
Of course, Steam is the number one service for buying PC games online. A massive 88% of respondents have used Steam to buy digital games. However, in second and third place respectively were Electronic Arts’ Origin store (42%) and the Epic Games Store (33%).
The Origin store has been around since 2011, but Epic Games Store is a brand-new platform. We noted that both Electronic Arts and Epic ranked fairly low in terms of brand perception. Steam and Valve, on the other hand, ranked very high. However, much of this was because of limited recognition. Among gamers, Epic had a 42% favorable rating, higher than EA at 38%.
We emphasize that our survey was specifically targeted towards an international gamer audience mainly in the 13 to 30-year-old demographic. This means the number of casual and console gamers are not strongly represented. When we do a survey targeted towards a market like the United States the results will be quite different.
DFC conducts regular consumer surveys to take the pulse of the industry. As an important disclaimer, we caution that these surveys should always be taken with a grain of salt. When doing forecasts, the number one source of data will always be actual sales, usage and revenue information. Surveys are just one of many data points used to build analysis.
In the coming weeks, we will be presenting some more results from our surveys. If you would like more information about these surveys or other DFC Intelligence products, please fill out this contact form.
To see a summary of this survey go here.
