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Digital game sales grew 10% in December while retail sales crashed

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

Worldwide digital game games sales in December 2016 grew to $7.6 billion, up 10 percent from December 2015, according to market researcher SuperData Research.

By contrast, retail game sales in certain parts of the world hit their worst levels in two decades. In the U.S., retail game sales fell 16 percent during the month of December, which is normally the strongest time of the year for game sales.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.