The introduction of stay-at-home orders, lockdowns and other measures that restricted travel led to significant increases in spend across the whole video games, and this was boosted by key releases in the first half of the year. Some of GSD's opening takeaways have been well documented over the past two years. Participating publishers include: Sony, Microsoft, Ubisoft, Take-Two, Activision Blizzard, EA, Capcom, Bandai Namco, Warner Bros, Sega, Milestone, Square Enix, Koch Media, Konami, Nacon, Paradox Interactive, Reply Forge, Codemasters, Dontnod Entertainment, Focus Home Interactive (now Focus Entertainment), Quantic Dream, Microids, UsTwo Games, Strelka Games, and Tiny Bull Studios.
Sales data was largely taken from the January to August periods, in order to offer a like-for-like comparison between 2019, 20.
The presentation was based on full-game boxed sales from 23 countries (primarily around Europe) and full-game download sales from 49 countries, encompassing PlayStation Store, Xbox Store, Nintendo Switch eShop and Steam. The company's senior games analyst and Australia/New Zealand territory manager Aidan Sakiris and video games consultant Sam Naji offered attendees a deeper look into the effect COVID-19 has had on full-game sales since 2019, charting the many spikes around lockdowns and hit new releases, as well as offering insight into well games are performing in 2021 so far. This was the big takeaway from last month's GI Live: London session by Games Sales Data, the agency that monitors digital and physical game sales across nearly 50 countries around the world. The pandemic may have boosted the games industry to new levels in 2020, but the real impact is being felt in a much quieter 2021, thanks to the many delays caused by the coronavirus.