No Man’s Sky helps digital gaming generate $6.1 billion in August

Consumers continue to spend more money on digital game downloads and microtransactions.

Digital game sales reached $6.1 billion in August, according to intelligence firm SuperData Research. That’s up 11 percent year-over-year. As always, games like League of Legends, Overwatch, and Clash of Clans contributed a bulk of that total. But sci-fi universe-exploring game No Man’s Sky and mobile monster-catching sim Pokémon Go helped get even more people spending their gaming dollars on downloadable games and items as opposed to at retailers. The gaming industry is a $99.6 billion business annually, and the balance of power is slowly shifting away from physical media.