According to this GI.biz interview with Yves Guillemot Europe is now a bigger territory than the US. Yves claims that turnover in Europe is more than 5% higher than turnover in the US.

Q: Europe as a market has developed a lot in the past five years - how do you assess the territory’s importance on the global stage now?

Yves Guillemot: First, our money - the pound or the euro - is very strong and because of that the turnover from those countries is heavier than they used to be. So for Ubisoft turnover Europe is actually more important than the US now, and by more than 5 per cent. It’s become a very strong market for us.

I think there are lots of customers that want to play - because in Europe we love to play - the only problem we had was that the games were becoming more and more difficult to play. Now that there’s more accessibility, some accessories that are helping people to have fun, I think this market has no limit in the growth it can have if we can make sure that the people that are coming in are staying.

It makes me wonder then who is in charge of Ubisoft’s digital distribution efforts. Ubisoft titles on Steam are limited to North American customers, they are not available to any European gamers. I find it odd that they would declare that Europe is now a bigger market than the US, yet they still exclude it on Steam.

I think someone at Ubisoft has to go and sort things out, Steam may not be perfect, but if European sales are constantly on the up, then what better way to help drive this than to let people buy their products on Steam. Sort it out Ubi.

GameSpot is reporting that PC game sales at retail for 2007 in the US totaled $911 million according to NPD statistics. This is 6% down from 2006 which saw $970 million in PC takings. The US PC takings have been on a steady decline since the 2004 peak of $1.1 billion. The NPD however recognise that the rise in digital distribution has played a key role in the falling retail figures, as the NPD doesn’t cover digital distribution figures it is not known how much is missing from the total PC sale figures in the US. This is what an NPD representative told GameSpot.

“The PC games sales landscape is changing to one that is increasingly reliant on digital sources of revenue. Our sales reflect the retail climate but there is a lot of gaming sales activity that is generated from digital downloads and subscriptions. I think the PC market continues to be quite healthy and we’re continuing to work on how to get our arms around the spending that occurs outside of retail. A number of our [surveys] ask respondents to indicate which platforms they game on, and the results of those questions make it very clear that the PC remains very prevalent, if not dominant, in the total gaming picture.”

Sales figures from digital distribution must be substantial, Steam has over 13 million subscribers and there are countless other channels for digital distribution. If figures from digital distribution were to be included in the total PC sales then it is likely that total figures would be closer to what they were in 2004.