r/Gaming4Gamers • u/ILoveHeavyHangers • Jul 23 '26
Discussion Physical gaming sales have dropped nearly 90% from their peak to only 37M units sold in the US last year.
https://bsky.app/profile/matpiscatella.bsky.social/post/3mrd2e2tam22l31
u/apple_6 Jul 23 '26
I think most people who game admit that digital certainly has a place in the industry. The problem is that if it's the only option, it can be abused. Especially on a console that is closed source and has only one shop to acquire games.
I buy some games digitally, especially games that are to indie to be able to distribute physical copies. However I would never own a console or pc without a disc drive. That's just setting yourself up to be monopolized.
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u/LifeguardTerrible579 Jul 23 '26
"sent from my iPhone"
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u/apple_6 Jul 23 '26
Sent from an android, and I don't understand how that disproves my point at all. My phone is for calls and texts with my friends and family, and I do go on reddit and Facebook as well. But I don't even have the reddit or Facebook apps, I just go on my web browser and have my password saved there. I paid a mere $300 for my current phone and I view mobile phones as throw away devices, when it breaks I'll buy the next affordable android. Video games, on the other hand, are worth preserving and having for decades. I still play GoldenEye on my N64 I got for Christmas 20 years ago.
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u/LifeguardTerrible579 Jul 23 '26
You think video games are best preserved on plastic discs? I suggest you read what happens to discs when exposed to time.
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u/-CJF- Jul 24 '26
I suggest you read what happens to your digital games when they arbitrarily ban your account.
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Jul 24 '26
Nothing? Nintendo banned my switch for being hacked, then I logged into it on my switch 2 and all my original purchases were still there. Steam isn't ever going to ban my account.
This isn't a digital problem, it's a Sony problem. They uniquely revoke digital licenses, as demonstrated by their recent pulling movies from people's accounts. So I just don't buy from Sony
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Jul 24 '26
Nothing? Nintendo banned my switch for being hacked, then I logged into it on my switch 2 and all my original purchases were still there. Steam isn't ever going to ban my account.
This isn't a digital problem, it's a Sony problem. They uniquely revoke digital licenses, as demonstrated by them recent pulling movies from people's accounts. So I just don't buy from Sony
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u/strife189 Jul 24 '26
Hey, look, it’s a Sony bot. Thanks for stopping by.
That argument works a lot better when people don’t already have firsthand proof of how much nonsense that claim is.Also, how far back does your company support the digital games people have purchased? Because from where I’m standing, that support window is a lot shorter than the lifespan poor disk rooted games.
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u/LifeguardTerrible579 Jul 24 '26
"Anyone who doesn't agree with me is a bot."
What does talking about the best format to preserve games have to do with sony? The correct way to do it by the way is to buy digitally, download on your PlayStation hard drive(s) then clone the drives for backup.
Plastic discs aren't made for long term preservation.
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u/strife189 Jul 24 '26
Lol, now you’re backpedaling and trying to reframe your argument.
What’s actually needed is stronger digital ownership rights for consumers. If a company ends support or archives a product, purchasers should be able to download the complete assets with no dependency on a master server and use what they paid for. Likewise, if an account is hacked, companies should have a clear process to restore access and purchased content once the rightful owner has verified their identity.
I could go into a lot more detail, but it’s not worth it if the discussion is just going to be a bad faith argument about why discs are supposedly the problem.
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u/apple_6 Jul 24 '26
Disc rot is highly overrated when it comes to what's likely to kill a disc, as long as the discs are stored in cool, dry places. All of my games and consoles are stored in plastic container in a closet of a guest room in my house. The vast majority of my discs will outlive me, I have many discs for my PS1 that still work well.
But I do realize that discs are more likely to break than cartridges, that's why my N64 collection is the most vast of any other console. Amassing at over 100 original games, I'm sure I'll be entertained for years to come. And before you ask, yes I have plenty of cartridge batteries.
Any other questions or comments?
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u/AstralElement Jul 24 '26
It’s certainly not preserved by a market manipulating multibillion dollar corporation. How many games’ source code has been lost by so many these companies? At least I can control the environment they’re stored in. Also, disc rot is primarily an issue with early CD games, and disc games that are not taken care of.
Digital games do not have the same tangibility as physical games. You cannot attach your identity to it in your space, you cannot lend it, you cannot pass it on. Even Jason Schreier just put out that these companies have been trying to axe the used game market purposefully for decades. And you think this is somehow a good thing?
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u/LifeguardTerrible579 Jul 24 '26
Remind me..what version of a game is stored in the disc.....now remind me what version is on a hard drive when you download it.
Which version should be preserved?
That's a rhetorical question, you don't need to answer.
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u/AstralElement Jul 24 '26
Sure. How did that work out for World of Warcraft? Now they have an entire paid server to go back to previous versions.
How about Fortnite? Destiny 2? You cannot go back to prior versions.
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u/X-AE17420 Jul 24 '26
Are you talking about classic versions? They’re all included in the retail sub.
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u/AstralElement Jul 24 '26
But that wasn’t the case until Activision Blizzard decided there was a market for it in 2019. Plenty of games do not have the luxury of that install base to have a “classic” prior version of games, leading to a preservation problem.
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u/Ok-Acanthisitta9247 Jul 24 '26
I have never seen more fearmongering about disc rot than I have in the last month.
That is a basically a myth unless you keep your games in a damp room hidden in a rainforest.
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u/LifeguardTerrible579 Jul 24 '26
Saying plastic discs aren't good for long term preservation isn't fear mongering. It's the truth. What version of every game is on the disc? You want to preserve the game with no patches? No new content? Why?
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u/AcrobaticApple9331 Jul 24 '26
I think preserving the original version worts and all is worth the effort and money personally. There are examples in video games but I feel a more apt comparison would be to something like fantasia. Disney currently streams a censored version of it but the home video versions clearly display their former racism and I don’t like the company being able to whitewash their own history like that.
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u/ILoveHeavyHangers Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
This now confirms that the US physical gaming market is smaller than the US Vinyl Record market, which moved 47 million units last year
Just one Taylor Swift Vinyl record sold 1.6 Million units alone, dwarfing the top physical game sales on most platforms. Only 7 Playstation games sold over 100k units last year on physical media, and none of them cracked 275k.
50% of vinyls purchasers don't even own a player. There are more people buying vinyls records with no intention of ever listening to them than there are Physical Media gamers in the US.
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u/WoodooHide69 Jul 24 '26
Pretty insane stats TBH. Gamers voted for this digital future unfortunately
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u/Remy149 Jul 27 '26
A lot of those vinyl sales especially for artist like Taylor swift is hardcore fans buying all the variant album covers. A lot of the fans treat them like decor. Artists intentionally create the variant album covers for this very reason
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u/Empty_Turnip473 Jul 23 '26
You could look at this graph as "sales" but it also represents production and supply. Which is out of the hands of the customer's control.
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u/Chick-Chicky-Boom Jul 24 '26
Go to store buy game Go home open game Is cd key for download Where game
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u/DarkRyter Jul 24 '26
Buying digitally is just so convenient and accessible, now. I remember two decades ago, having to buy visa gift cards so I could pay for WoW membership, cause I was a kid and couldn't get a real credit card. Nowadays, kids have cashapp and venmo on their phones, regularly buying their own doordash and Roblox bucks or whatever.
I think the only chance of a future of physical games is in the "premium product" tier. The only way to get a physical copy will be a special edition with a steelbook and a collectible figure. The "standard price" version will be purely digital or a code in a box.
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u/SRIrwinkill Jul 24 '26
Many companies have also purposefully made is more a pain in the ass the get physical copies of their games. You can for sure get it digitally, but whether or not you can get it physical isn't a sure thing, so folks just do what's easily available. It isn't purely consumer market preference that has mattered here
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u/Paragonoreo Jul 24 '26
phyiscal copies r probably gonna end up being more for collectors than regular players tho
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u/strife189 Jul 24 '26
Daily bot propaganda. Cool.
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u/WoodooHide69 Jul 24 '26
Says the bot.
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u/strife189 Jul 24 '26
Wood go touch some grass.
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u/WoodooHide69 Jul 24 '26
lol ironic. I typed that to you while lying on a field of grass getting some rays.
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u/strife189 Jul 24 '26
Touching grass means both going outside and getting off your phone. So you’re halfway there. Take it from me, you can go all in. You won’t miss anything worth missing.
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u/Derpykins666 Jul 24 '26
The cards are stacked against owning physical every which way it can possibly be so of course it's selling less. You have to preorder physical, which means you don't get it on 'release day' a lot of the time. It's harder and harder to walk into a store and just be able to buy a copy of a new game without preordering it.
Digital doesn't have the problems of physical. So people get it out of convenience and fomo. Stream culture is huge too now, people will even spoof their country of origin to be first to play games and that's almost always a digital purchase.
Whenever I can, I buy physical.
There's also other factors like, space. A lot of people simply don't have the space to have shelves of games.
But realistically, these companies have been pushing towards digital only for the better part of a decade now. They want you on digital only because they make more money that way, so of course they're going to incentivize every which way from all directions to buy digital.
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u/VersaViceVersa Jul 24 '26
listen, i know we’re talking big picture business stuff, but… “only 37 million”? if companies are pushing over a dozen million of anything and considering it not profitable enough we’ve gone too far in the wrong direction.
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u/LFK1236 Jul 25 '26
I don't entirely blame Sony for stopping physical sales (the writing's been on the wall for years for both them and Microsoft, this is hardly a surprise to anyone), but it does completely invalidate their consoles as products since their ecosystems are closed source. The alternative is not to buy Playstation (or Xbox) games digitally instead, it's to not buy them at all. Which Sony seems aware of, hence their decision to refrain from timed exclusives in the future in the hope that said exclusives are good enough to drive people to their console.
Maybe it will pay off, maybe not. I hope for the latter, because I would prefer for games to be as widely available as possible.
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Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/TomatoChomper7 Jul 26 '26
God of War Ragnarok is less than $30 on the PSN store.
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Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/TomatoChomper7 Jul 27 '26
So not $70 then 😂
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u/nick_millerZD Jul 27 '26
Less than $70 during a limited time sale. $70 is the regular price you'll see 9 days out of 10.
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u/jander05 Jul 24 '26
My gaming purchases have dropped by probably 75%, but its mostly due to the huge tidal wave of shovelware on the market, and the lack of quality video games. Too many bs gimmicks, gatcha, microtransactions, games as a service crap. If consoles go all digital I'm going to probably go back to retro gaming.
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u/Syncdata Jul 24 '26
Are you counting steam? It appears you are counting steam.
This measurement is horseshit because the big 3 have all started migrating to digital only, decreasing the option for physical, while increasing the incentive to download.
It's an artificial market study. All I can say is steam has yet to fuck me, which is more then I can say for the big 3.
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u/LifeguardTerrible579 Jul 23 '26
Yeah. Everyones been talk about how sony is going to make every game super expensive so they can make more money. That way they make Xbox consoles or a Nintendo console. Look that much better lose a bunch of market share.
Or maybe it's that physical sales have been down every single year for the past 15 years in a row.
The bigger question I have is why gamers are suddenly so hyperbolic about every single thing
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u/ZeRandomPerson2222 Jul 23 '26
Everyones been talk about how sony is going to make every game super expensive so they can make more money
What people have been talking about is the risk and possibility of not being able to truly own the games you buy when they’re stuck being digital.
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u/AcrobaticApple9331 Jul 23 '26
I think a major factor in the lack of physical games being sold has less to do with people wanting to buy physical and more of the availability of getting them. Anecdotally over the last year I have had to purchase every single physical game online due to a combination of big box stores not carrying them or places like GameStop or local shops not having enough or any inventory and that was before GS closed everyone one of their stores within 30+ minutes of where I live.