U.S. Physical Game Sales Just Hit Their Lowest ‘All-Time Tracked’ Point In 30 Years

    Posted by Turbostrider27

    33 Comments

    1. meanwhile resident evil **pre-orders** sold out and they can’t print copies fast enough.

      these “physical game sales are dying” figures are always clickbait that rely on misleading figures. (add in that this is a kotaku article, and it’s a recipe for nonsense)

    2. noelle-silva on

      Honestly not surprising. My local Best Buy and Target barely keep anything in stock, Walmart isn’t much better either. Amazon is constantly delaying shipment of game preorders, etc.

      They’re really doing their best to push people towards digital.

    3. Cjdilworth1213 on

      Didn’t help that I pre-ordered Resident Evil physical for ps5 4 months ago and it’s currently not even shipped yet so I had to go digital because no local stores had any left. Feels like an actual effort to kill physical.

    4. That’s expected. The goal is to stop selling physical games. There’s a good chance that the next generation of consoles will not have a built-in disc drive.

    5. Sorry-Engineer8854 on

      With a lot of brick and mortar stores closing. The supply is crippling the demand too.

    6. sleeplessaddict on

      I’m gonna be so incredibly sad when consoles remove the disc drive in all their models because I still use Gamefly and that’ll completely kill that company

    7. Filmmagician on

      Are they including second hand games? When big box stores dont’ want to carry physical anymore, this is a no brainer. I’ve never bought so many physical games in my life, however.

    8. Generic_user_person on

      I mean? Yea I believe it

      Games to me come in two flavors. Stuff I want to play and therefore buy on release

      And stuff I could play, but don’t care enough so I’ll just wait until it gets added to PS+ premium.

      For the first one, the price is the same physical as well as digital. And the digital I have 100% certainly that I can play on release.

      For the second, who cares.

      I think I have 4 physical games from the past 10 years, and every single one was a gift. Either directly, or from a GameStop gift card. The only exception was a place near me selling Ragnarok a week early.

    9. In UK brand new physical media is basically dead except Vinyl. But 2nd hand is thriving because its basically its own economy, especially with like CeX.

    10. Nonadventures on

      Are they counting that little card that says “this is a Zelda game” but it’s really just a digital code? That’s the only way to get some games physically now.

    11. i’m not surprised if true. with the majority of games being anywhere from 50-100+ GBs and with discs and cartridges simply acting as a keycard, owning the physical copy is a handicap since we still have to install the game and download all the updates. i went all digital with my PS5 and it’s much more convenient having full access to the full games all on my hard drive instead of being handicapped with having to use a disc despite the games still taking up the same amount of storage space on my console.

    12. It didn’t help that Requiem barely had any physical copies in stock. Went to 2 gamestops and 1 best buy to get one and none had it so I had no choice but to resort to digital.

    13. No shit

      You mean an industry shifting away from physical games is selling *fewer* physical games now?

    14. I know where the trend is going, but I’m still steadfast in supporting physical games. I’ll probably be one of the last holdouts

    15. GruncleShaxx on

      I mean, a lot of games these days aren’t even releasing physical editions…..

    16. It seems to me like the number of physical copies pressed is based on a percentage of the preorder response.

      If I am even considering buying a game, I will preorder it at my local brick-and-mortar Gamestop as soon as preorder is available. I used to wait, but the last few times I did, I couldn’t snag a copy.

    17. TiredReader87 on

      Given that my local Walmart only got 4 copies of Resident Evil Requiem for PS5, and zero for Xbox…I’m not surprised

    18. PendejoSosVos on

      That’s probably because corporations are actively trying to kill physical media? Not exactly a secret, when you can’t find shit anywhere.

    19. It’s a shame. Going all digital will only hurt consumers. Seems many don’t care and many go all digital anyways.

    20. With the growth of digital, every year will be a new low. While the trend is down year-on-year, **”the rate of decline has slowed.”**

    21. Every day for over a decade they keep saying physical is dead but it’s still here I guess one day in the future it will be dead and then since they said it every day then they will say I told you so lol

    22. Traditional_Entry183 on

      Well, im going to buy two games this month, after only buying two all of last year. Maybe another not too long after that.

      Physical forever.

    23. For me there is no point in getting physical games anymore. When i was a child i loved holding the games and unpacking them, but now i just want to download a game and get it done with

      Why keep all the discs around to manually change it all the time? A disc gets damaged and im screwed, or i order a game and it might have delivery problems so i have to wait.

      Im very happy with my digital only PS5

    24. I want to have physical games but they are legit making it hard to get them. They are really pushing for us to own nothing.

    25. UnoKajillion on

      These metrics also normally include all digital purchases; game, expansions, cosmetics, season passes. Vs 1 singular physical game where those people might still purchase a digital asset. Physical is dying, but they want everyone to thing it is dying faster than it is so they jump ship earlier

    26. Well charging $70+ when most game’s quality is worse than previous years when they were $60 didn’t help.