EA generated $90m through digital distribution in Q1

While NPD reports are great for tallying up the sales of actual physical games – you know, like on discs and what not – a rapidly growing segment of the video game industry operates outside their purview, performing the mysterious (and often times lucrative) alchemy of turning bits slung digitally over the internet into cold, hard cash.

Electronic Arts shared some figures during their fiscal Q1 conference call, announcing it generated over $90 million in revenue through digital distribution in that three month period. Those figures are ostensibly gathered from digital sales of PC games on the EA Store, not to mention downloadable content for video game consoles (insert your own joke here about Battlefield weapons here). Sized up against EA's overall quarterly revenue of $804m, digital distribution accounts for an impressive 11% of that total and, we're quite certain, will continue to grow.