The beginning of the end
Looking back, it’s easy to see why sales of physical games peaked in the late 2000s. At the time, services such as Xbox Live Arcade, PSN and WiiWare were already demonstrating console gamers’ willingness to pay to download small indie games, a concept that extended to downloadable versions of major releases such as notorious And LittleBigPlanet.
The slight increase in physical gaming revenue last year cannot make up for 16 years of consistent and sharp declines. The slight increase in physical gaming revenue last year cannot make up for 16 years of consistent and sharp declines.
Photo: Mat Piscatella / Circana
By the time the PlayStation Vita launched in 2012, Sony required all publishers producing physical game cartridges to also offer a download option. Subsequent consoles such as the Wii U, PS4 and Xbox One continued this trend, and by the end of 2010, console exclusive versions were virtually non-existent. In recent years, some big-budget games have foregone retail release altogether or offered retail “download-in-a-box” options such as the Switch 2’s Game Key Cards or Grand Craft Auto VIprintable download codes.
Over the last 15 years or so, console gamers have overwhelmingly voted with their wallets for all of these digital download options, preferring the convenience of not having to leave the house to buy a game (or get off the couch to switch to a new game) over the permanence of games on discs and cartridges. The shift has been so dramatic that many modern console gamers may well ditch the disc drive altogether; Piscatella reported today that 27 percent of all PS5 hardware and 52 percent of all Xbox Series hardware sold in the US are “digital-only” versions.
None of this data will bring much comfort to the small but passionate group of console gamers who still buy games in their hands. But the numbers explain pretty clearly why Sony doesn’t seem worried about losing what is, from a financial perspective, a fairly small segment of its current gaming business.