Current Events > Physical gaming media all but dead, report

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://twitter.com/MatPiscatella/status/1777735255010811982?t=6-dI8fnK-yMLSoq3UOlCmw&s=19

Wow

And yet, my Switch collection is at 600+ physical games and growing.

Holy shit

That isn't what that means.

This counts microtransactions, sub services, and shit like mobile.

"All content spending" potentially includes dlc, season passes, battle passes, cash shop purchases, monthly subscriptions, and f2p gatcha games.

Show me the percentage of just game purchases.

Definitely been a while since I bought a physical game. The number was definitely shrinking each year.

yea this isnt a reflection of full game sales. I'd guess phyiscal is still up around 30-40%

gamerofNS posted...

And yet, my Switch collection is at 600+ physical games and growing.

what

s0nicfan posted...

"All content spending" potentially includes dlc, season passes, battle passes, cash shop purchases, monthly subscriptions, and f2p gatcha games.

Show me the percentage of just game purchases.

I had a tough time finding specifics other than this article:

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2023/11/physical-games-represented-just-4percent-of-sales-for-playstation-last-quarter

Zooming in on PlayStation's physical/digital sales split (which looks at units sold rather than cash), just over two thirds (67 per cent) of software sales were digital in Q2 2023. This is a slight increase year-on-year, but down compared to Q1 2023.

So that was from around this time last year.

vinyl is a thing

even if physical media dies it will come back

I would need a warehouse if all my games were physical

>US

gamerofNS posted...

And yet, my Switch collection is at 600+ physical games and growing.

are you for real because I find it sort of hard to imagine there are even that many different physical switch games

I think people here are missing the most important component.
its adding in mobile games and purchases there.
there is no physical for any of the 10s of thousands of mobile games.plus mobile gaming is the vast majority of all gaming,
Also beyond that its counting microtransactions and dlc purchases as well in those numbers,

so even if this was done 10 years ago, physical still would have been extremely low when you put it against mobile apps and all microtransactions.
it skews the whole thing drastically

kirbymuncher posted...

are you for real because I find it sort of hard to imagine there are even that many different physical switch games

Can't exactly find an accurate number, but there seems to be somewhere around 1200-1300. Maybe even more....

kirbymuncher posted...

are you for real because I find it sort of hard to imagine there are even that many different physical switch games

Apparently as of 2 years ago based on Google docs & North American copies, there was 1060 physical games. So dude is buying a physical copy of every single piece of shovelware there is more than likely. Not just first party IP.
In an updated list, I see 1,737 physical released in the US. Guy has bought around a 1/3rd of all switch games ever released as physical versions, I doubt the majority are worth the Nintendo tax lol

I definitely feel buying a physical is going out of my way now. With how convenient internet has become. However I purchase a physical here and there. And will do so as long as the option is there.

Physical gaming media isnt even close to dead.

Skewed data is skewed.

requiem en pace

https://twitter.com/MatPiscatella/status/1777754431582503294?t=u2dgG1wJbVGKvSjSWweNsw&s=19

They're skewing it a lot so they have an excuse pretty much

This data is correct

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/a/a9a61c8a.png
thanks Mr. Corpo-Talking Head, but I'm going to continue buying Switch cartridges

At least now they no longer have to pay for discs boxers and transport games should be cheaper to buy right?

havean776 posted...

At least now they no longer have to pay for discs boxers and transport games should be cheaper to buy right?

AH HA HA HA HA... Yeah no

If anything they will just make an excuse to give games a price increase

But ya, I understand why digital games are popular, I will always prefer my physical piece of media

Mobile is included in this probably providing a major percentage of digital.

SocialistGamer posted...

Mobile is included in this probably providing a major percentage of digital.

Mobile helps but PC and VR gaming are all digital too

I really don't get the obsession with physical. By the time you can't use your legit digital copy anymore, it'll be basically zero effort to get a non-legit one to run on either an emulator or possibly even the original hardware, and it'll be an old enough game that no one will really care if you do so, especially if it's a game you legitimately owned.

The way I see it, physical just takes up space and adds inconvenience to switching games. Not to mention the far higher risk of losing access to your game *while it's still relatively new*.

Unsuprised_Pika posted...

That isn't what that means.

This counts microtransactions, sub services, and shit like mobile.

s0nicfan posted...

"All content spending" potentially includes dlc, season passes, battle passes, cash shop purchases, monthly subscriptions, and f2p gatcha games.

Show me the percentage of just game purchases.

What if there's a growing population of people who don't buy games at all anymore

Punished_Blinx posted...

What if there's a growing population of people who don't buy games at all anymore

Wouldn't really be relevant to how this is being presented as a consumer preference for buying digital vs physical.

s0nicfan posted...

Wouldn't really be relevant to how this is being presented as a consumer preference for buying digital vs physical.

It isn't presented as physical vs digital sales. It's presented as the proportion of where consumers are spending their money on video games.

Punished_Blinx posted...

It isn't presented as physical vs digital sales. It's presented as the proportion of where consumers are spending their money on video games.

Agree to disagree. They could have broken it down by category if that were the case. IMO presenting the data as "Physical software accounted for approximately 10% of all US video game content spending", effectively putting disk sales on one side and literally every other game expense on the other, is clearly meant to imply physical game sales aren't what people want.

I refuse to purchase any game on digital that is too big or has a physical alternative.

The internet was a mistake.

Im pure physical

Last physical game I bought was the first ps4 Spider-Man. Just not a priority for me these days

s0nicfan posted...

Agree to disagree. They could have broken it down by category if that were the case. IMO presenting the data as "Physical software accounted for approximately 10% of all US video game content spending", effectively putting disk sales on one side and literally every other game expense on the other, is clearly meant to imply physical game sales aren't what people want.

You don't think the other 95% has any other influence on this 5% figure that is constantly shrinking? Is physical going to grow anytime soon?

It's like saying that Netflix subscriptions shouldn't count and you just want to base it on DVD vs YouTube purchases. These things are all connected. It's all part of the same industry competing for dollars. A person who spent $200 on Fortnite in a year did not spend that $200 on other games. Any amount of time they spend playing these games is time they don't play other games. Any time I look at the top played games on PlayStation and Xbox it's free to play games. Of course we can't just ignore how this impacts everything else.

Funnily enough games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Palworld aren't tracked by Circana. So at that point you'd only be basing it on games that have both physical and digital releases that are tracked by Circana.

That is an improper conclusion to draw from that when it says 'all spending'. That would include all spectrums of video games, their DLC content, and microtransactions.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

It's the entire culture of gaming & movies/social media that has moved us to quick consumerism & consumption of products that has pulled physical media into a more niche area.

PC gaming started the trend that began to doom us, old people will remember when you could go into stores & buy physical discs for WoW, PC games & lots of stuff. Then when disc trays started to get phased out of laptops & such, tower PCs began doing it as well. The console market is pretty much all that keeps physical media alive, & far too many people don't understand right to repair or ownership of physical media.

I'm just surprised that the people complaining about big tech & big corpo the most, never mention video games when they complain about the WEF or "you'll own nothing & like it" crowd. Not even a dismissive wank of acknowledgement about owning what you buy, just nothing. People just want to consume & move onto next item, so ownership of what we buy has fallen to the wayside.

As others have said, TC is using the statistics wrong.

PC gaming poisons everything.

hereforemnant posted...

It's the entire culture of gaming & movies/social media that has moved us to quick consumerism & consumption of products that has pulled physical media into a more niche area.

PC gaming started the trend that began to doom us, old people will remember when you could go into stores & buy physical discs for WoW, PC games & lots of stuff. Then when disc trays started to get phased out of laptops & such, tower PCs began doing it as well. The console market is pretty much all that keeps physical media alive, & far too many people don't understand right to repair or ownership of physical media.

I'm just surprised that the people complaining about big tech & big corpo the most, never mention video games when they complain about the WEF or "you'll own nothing & like it" crowd. Not even a dismissive wank of acknowledgement about owning what you buy, just nothing. People just want to consume & move onto next item, so ownership of what we buy has fallen to the wayside.

Video game console hardware spending also peaked in 2008.

I wonder how many people who think physical game sales are still good would open up a video game store.

hereforemnant posted...

In an updated list, I see 1,737 physical released in the US. Guy has bought around a 1/3rd of all switch games ever released as physical versions

somehow I think it's more likely he's just massively exaggerating lol

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

tfw you pirate a game you already own on console just because you don't want to get up and set up your console every time you want to play it (note to mods: this is a hypothetical person who is hypothetically pirating something and any relation to real gfaqs users is entirely coincidence)

kirbymuncher posted...

somehow I think it's more likely he's just massively exaggerating lol

tfw you pirate a game you already own on console just because you don't want to get up and set up your console every time you want to play it (note to mods: this is a hypothetical person who is hypothetically pirating something and any relation to real gfaqs users is entirely coincidence)

I've straight up rebought games for this reason tbh. Though often I wait for a sale on the second platform.

Although, playing on different platforms isn't really an argument either way for physical vs digital.

If digital distribution is mandatory I'm pirating and going retro.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


I'm really hoping that the general populace wakes up to the enshittification of media, because the current landscape is _very_ anti-consumer. Streaming used to be safe and convenient. We became comfortable with not owning them because they were available in perpetuity, and for a marginal price relative to owning a physical movie, Mr. Ubisoft Executive.

That business model works with Spotify and YouTube Music, but falls apart when you have 17 separate streaming services all vying for your watch time. Then you have to worry about whether a game will be on a service for the entire time you wish to play it, and if not, whether it will be a playable state if you decide you want to play it 10 years down the road.

Punished_Blinx posted...

Video game console hardware spending also peaked in 2008.

I wonder how many people who think physical game sales are still good would open up a video game store.

Yet it remains the largest industry of entertainment in the entire world now, even more so than music/movies & TV combined. They(gaming publishers) sold the lie that moving to digital would reduce costs & save customers money & it doesn't unless you just wait for the normal fall off in price that's been happening for decades. Opening a store with a single font of income is a bad idea for an item depending on if the good is elastic or inelastic as well obviously.

Video games are incredibly elastic, you're asking for losing money which is why most today split between media, consoles, toys & extra add-ons, plushies & things like that alongside it.