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[ArtHands]

Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social)

The rate of decline in US physical video game software spending accelerated in 2024. Spending on physical video game software in the US has been cut in more than half since 2021 and is now more than 85% below its 2008 peak. We'll see if Switch 2 can help slow/reverse this trend in 2025.

bsky.app

The rate of decline in US physical video game software spending accelerated in 2024.Spending on physical video game software in the US has been cut in more than half since 2021 and is now more than 85% below its 2008 peak.We'll see if Switch 2 can help slow/reverse this trend in 2025.

 

[RedC]

 

[Hero_Select]

Walked into a Best Buy the other day.. the game secion for PS, Xbox and Switch are extremely barebone.. sad to see

 

[Generic]

It's over...

 

[drganon]

Curious how you made this thread but you're nowhere to be seen in the other sales threads.

 

[Robb]

Fear not, salvation is coming.

 

[Hudo]

PS6 and next Xbox gonna be digital-only for the US market.

 

[Three]

PS6 and next Xbox gonna be digital-only for the US market.

Ps6 no, but xbox already is.

 

[cormack12]

Consumers have spoken. Embrace the future.

 

[Hudo]

Ps6 no, but xbox already is.

I wouldn't be surprised if PS6 is going to be like PS5 Pro, where the digital-only version is significantly cheaper and more readily available because you don't need to buy an overpriced disc drive, which is scarce in availability. Sony gonna "soft steer" consumers to digital-only stuff.

 

[ArtHands]

 

[Icymanipulator]

It suck that we don’t own things anymore, but the convenience factor is just too hard it pass up for most people.
Just download it right from the console. No lines, no leaving the house, no games being “sold out”, preload is a thing, etc.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

I wouldn't be surprised if PS6 is going to be like PS5 Pro, where the digital-only version is significantly cheaper and more readily available because you don't need to buy an overpriced disc drive, which is scarce in availability. Sony gonna "soft steer" consumers to digital-only stuff.

As long as a disc-drive remains an option for those that want it, I don't see a problem with this approach.

Sure, a disc-drive could be overpriced, but ultimately it will safe you a lot of money long-term as you can get physical games for much, much cheaper than digital versions.
In that regard it's a similar principle to PC gaming.

It's all about how these companies handle support for physical copies.

 

[MALpractice311]

Consumers have spoken. Embrace the future.

Well, the average consumer is an idiot. Digital only means walled gardens and no competition among retailers making the digital storefronts monopolies effectively, which therefore have no incentive to lower prices or offer sales. Licenses can be revoked. Games can be altered post release. Games can be delisted for any reason. Fuck an all digital future.

 

[Mr Hyde]

Us physical bros are nearing extinction. It´s a scary future. But Nintendo will at least hold out for another generation with Switch 2. Maybe they will be the only publisher that values physical game media in the future. If that´s the case, Nintendos ecosystem will be where I spend my hard earned money when it comes to physical games.

 

[Fake]

Mat Piscatella a very cunning person. He stop showing sales numbers because hurt companies feelings, but somehow he is so happy in showing that physical media is decreasing, like an true liberal that hate plastic cases and embrace digital because 'love nature'.

South America love so much physical media that when even Sony flee from Brazil they still build a factory to create physical disk for PS5.

Sony has set up a production line in Brazil to make physical PS5 discs for Latin America | VGC

Production will take place in its “state-of-the-art facility” in Manaus…

www.videogameschronicle.com

 

[onQ123]

PS6 and next Xbox gonna be digital-only for the US market.

PlayStation is making a lot of money from the Blu-ray drives so it's not going away yet.

 

[Goalus]

Good.

PlayStation is making a lot of money from the Blu-ray drives so it's not going away yet.

A lot of costs are involved in producing and shipping physical games though, and the cut the retailers take is no joke either. I doubt the outcome is positive compared to fully digital distribution.

 

[StereoVsn]

Walked into a Best Buy the other day.. the game secion for PS, Xbox and Switch are extremely barebone.. sad to see

Yep, both BestBuy and Target don’t have much anymore.

I strongly dislike this upcoming all digital future.

 

[PeteBull]

Very sad to see, even more incentive to go/stay with pc coz on consoles u only got 1 game store, which is held by platform owner, so 0 competition, on pc u got multiple stores so even with all digital content they compete vs eachother somewhat still.

 

[Radical_3d]

PS6 and next Xbox gonna be digital-only for the US market.

 

[StereoVsn]

Us physical bros are nearing extinction. It´s a scary future. But Nintendo will at least hold out for another generation with Switch 2. Maybe they will be the only publisher that values physical game media in the future. If that´s the case, Nintendos ecosystem will be where I spend my hard earned money when it comes to physical games.

Yep, if I am going to spend on digital it’s going to be on PC where there is a meaningful choice between storefronts and multiple outlets selling games and providing competition.

 

[Larivel]

The average consumer just buys what's available, and when publishers limit the stock of physical copies or simply choose not to release them, sales decrease inorganically.

Physical media is pro-consumer and has absolutely no effect on people preference for digital media, so I don’t understand why I see digital-only gamers celebrating its decline...

 

[rm082e]

My local Target a few weeks ago:

 

[Rawbutt Jellybean]

Physical media as an option is the main selling point of consoles for me. Can't tell you how many times I was interested in some 3+ year old game and bought it physically because the console storefront still had it listed full price.

 

[ReyBrujo]

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

I’m really curious what the split is for each system.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the vast majority of physical game sales are for Switch.

 

[Moridianae]

It was inevitable. i do thinkt that Sony(a lesser extent) snd Nintrndo will keep it alive for a bit longer, but it's only got another year at best.

The COVID years changed a lot of things, especially physical media. Can't leave home? Well, there's a plethora of apps and PS Store, Game Pass, Nintendo Shop, etc. or movie streamingml.

Games often are on sale whereas their physical versions are not. I believe I got Cyberpunk for $20 something and physical versions were still $40-60.


I'm not entirely convinced that the movie theater experience ever fully recovered. It may have, I'm not sure.

 

[Mr Hyde]

Yep, if I am going to spend on digital it’s going to be on PC where there is a meaningful choice between storefronts and multiple outlets selling games and providing competition.

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

Imagine the idiocy of jumping to conclusions about spending habits by mixing physical edition game sales with MTX of F2P games. Without a full breakdown by platform and digital titles versus physical titles, this is bullshit.

 

[swaffles23]

Im going down with the ship

 

[Hyperborean]

I know Switch 2 can play Switch 1 cartridges, but are Switch 2 games coming on 50gb+ carts the size of PS4 games? Have we ever had them that size before?

 

[CompleteGlobalSaturation]

Another reason for me to care even less about console gaming.

 

[ManaByte]

This is the final generation with discs.

 

[LordCBH]

This timeline is shit. SHIT.

 

[Topher]

Would love to see worldwide numbers.

 

[Fabieter]

It suck that we don’t own things anymore, but the convenience factor is just too hard it pass up for most people.
Just download it right from the console. No lines, no leaving the house, no games being “sold out”, preload is a thing, etc.

Most retailer deliver the games to your house these days some of them pre release. This is sad and the only difference left to a PC.

 

[RoboFu]

makes sense when gamers are moving to PC

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

With the sizes of modern game files combined with the ease of not having to swap out discs or cartridges (not to mention most games don’t even fully ship on them anymore), it’s no wonder. Nintendo will be the last bastion, and no doubt with the price and expense of shipping 64+ GB carts, they’ll try and convert users to digital too. They already prefer digital, we know this from the Game Voucher program. Not to mention it’s far more profitable to not have to ship games to stores and give retailers a cut, pay for shipping, and pay for the plastic cases and the expensive carts themselves.

 

[NomenNescio]

It's joever.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Watched a video of a gamer who lost most of his collection in the recent California fires.
I don't know if he is going to replace with digital or not.

 

[Judge Magister]

It's not over yet!

 

[TGO]

You missed this one

 

[Robb]

I know Switch 2 can play Switch 1 cartridges, but are Switch 2 games coming on 50gb+ carts the size of PS4 games? Have we ever had them that size before?

I’m sure Switch 2 cartridges will be higher capacity, but even then I’m not sure how useful that’ll be since it’ll be more expensive for developers to use those higher capacity carts as well. I’m pretty sure the amount of games that use the highest capacity cartridge size on Switch can be counted on one hand.

Switch 2 will definitely, compared to Ps5/XBS, have a very low internal storage capacity as well.

It’ll be interesting to see how, or if, Nintendo will tackle that. There have been patents published pretty recently suggesting solutions that relate to DLSS:

a video game that is designed to output images at 4k natively may have a total size of 60GB. However, if the size of the images produced by the video game engine are 1080p, then the total size need for the video game may decreased to, for example, 20GB. Even if the images are then output by the video game engine at 1080p, the techniques herein [DLSS type upscaling] may be used to transform such images to 4k images during runtime.

It’s just a patent for now though so who knows if it’ll even be utilized. And even if it is possible/used, who knows if devs would actually do this instead of just releasing an all digital version. But it’s interesting to see that Nintendo is indeed thinking about this stuff.

 

[WoJ]

While there is definitely a shift in consumer sentiment some of this is forced obsolescence by prioritizing disc only consoles etc. Sad to see.

Guess I'll be moving to PC.

 

[poppabk]

Imagine the idiocy of jumping to conclusions about spending habits by mixing physical edition game sales with MTX of F2P games. Without a full breakdown by platform and digital titles versus physical titles, this is bullshit.

It's literally just a graph of how much people spent on physical media. And its heading south.

 

[cormack12]

Well, the average consumer is an idiot. Digital only means walled gardens and no competition among retailers making the digital storefronts monopolies effectively, which therefore have no incentive to lower prices or offer sales. Licenses can be revoked. Games can be altered post release. Games can be delisted for any reason. Fuck an all digital future.

These forever libraries will not last. Optical media deteriorates over time. There are plenty of digital sales. This only hurts players who impulsively buy lots of titles on day one. You don't need to buy every single player games day one because of FOMO.

Physical media can be scratched or destroyed as well (accidentally). The argument against digital doesn't stack up. The only valid argument is the walled garden one (which I agree with fwiw), but that's a different issue. Digital is growing and quickly eclipsing physical even with that issue.

And if the switch was a modern device with a reasonable amount of storage and an eShop that isn't older and more out of date than their hardware, you'd see a similar uptick as well.

For all the cutting edge tech gaming brings us, we have a large chunk of luddites.

 

[Caffeine]

Ye $100 games isn't gonna stop that its gonna accelerate it more 6 feet into the ground.

 

[Klosshufvud]

Imagine the idiocy of jumping to conclusions about spending habits by mixing physical edition game sales with MTX of F2P games. Without a full breakdown by platform and digital titles versus physical titles, this is bullshit.

Matt Pishitella is running the agenda of big corpos. He's been on an anti-physical tirade since forever now. Fuck him.

 

[squidilix]

Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social)

The rate of decline in US physical video game software spending accelerated in 2024. Spending on physical video game software in the US has been cut in more than half since 2021 and is now more than 85% below its 2008 peak. We'll see if Switch 2 can help slow/reverse this trend in 2025.

bsky.app

So 2027 is really over. Many company like Limite Run will exist I think, but costing really more.

PS6 full demat with disc drive extension confirmed.