Digital downloads jumped 47% across Europe in 2020

211.9 million games were sold across UK & Ireland, mainland Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in 2020, according to sales tracker GSD.
GSD tracks games sold in boxes across multiple territories, and also counts digital download sales from most major games publishers (see the bottom of this article for full details).
We have already done a specific analysis of the UK market, so for this analysis we will focus on all European markets where GSD tracks both boxed games and digital games, excluding the UK. These will include Benelux, France, GSA (Germany, Switzerland, Austria), Iberia, Nordics and Poland.
For these markets, 123.7 million games were sold, which is a 19% jump over 2019. 58.7 million of those games were downloaded, which is a rise of 47% over the year before. Despite lockdown restrictions causing High Street stores to close, 65 million boxed games were sold across the various markets, which is a rise of 0.8%.
In order to get a more accurate reading of the market share between boxed and digital, we have to remove countries that do not count both boxed and digital sales. We also have to subtract companies like Nintendo, Bethesda and CD Projekt, who do not share digital numbers with GSD. After doing that, we can see that 59% of games sold by tracked publishers were downloaded, with the remainder coming via physical sales. In 2019, less than 48% of sales were digital.

Digital downloads jumped 47% across Europe in 2020 | European Annual Report | GamesIndustry.biz