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Square-Enix sales report shows how much digital sales have gained ground over physical
- Thread starter cireza
- Start date
Bernd Lauert
Banned
Or when you realize that retail game sales only make up 4% of Playstation's total revenue.
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cireza
Member
They don't sell physical games on the internet ?
kingfey
Banned
Those aren't the only thing.
Physical copies is tied to production. And how much they can ship it. Its quite costly these days, for publishers to do physical copies.
You have to make deals with stores, meet the demand production, and have enough warehouse to make the game. Plus you need to secure enough disc's from the disc maker.
Digital is just a code,which the platform holder grants you. It costs less, and doesn't need a warehouse for it.
To publishers, the 2nd option makes more money for them.
kingfey
Banned
Warehouses. You need people to make these disc boxes. And put them in packages for sale.
cireza
Member
So you are saying that physical games have not been available for an entire year. I don't remember that there was a shortage of all physical games on a global scale.
kingfey
Banned
Think of it as a lemonade stall. Once that stall finishes what it has, you wont have enough more drink to make. If the factory that makes the lemonade for you is closed, you wont have enough lemonade to sell.
That is what happened to physical games. Whatever they had was limited. The factories were closed, due to the lockdowns. The distribution centers were closed due to the lockdown. So you have an issue producing more copies in order to sell them. Internet or no internet, if production isn't up, you cant sell anything.
Thirty7ven
Banned
“puts in perspective the UK physical numbers”, yes duh lmao, nobody with a developed brain actually believed those were the extent of the sales.
But you know, things work proportionally.
But you know, things work proportionally.
AV
We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
Covid accelerated it, not caused it. Digital sales on PS4 overtook physical for the first time in the first quarter of 2019, WELL before the pandemic started. There was a 5% growth in the digital-physical ratio between 2017 and 2018.
Page 8: https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/pdf/19q1_supplement.pdf
Digital will overtake physical regardless, eventually. Covid is just expediting the process. Most people simply do not care about the advantages of physical, they buy a few games every year and will pay a small premium to have it available the minute it launches, not have to worry about damaging or losing the disc etc.
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Fredrik
Member
Have games been sold out during the pandemic? I’ve only seen talk about consoles.
cireza
Member
Physical games were not sold out during the pandemic. They were readily available for everyone to purchase from online retailers.
kingfey
Banned
Available doesn't mean it will be brought to you easily. The entire transportation on that year got affected.
People turned to digital, since it was easier to get the games.
Every country had a tight lockdown on their borders, and every product that is being shipped was Hazzard of covid19.
kingfey
Banned
People went to digital. Its why we didn't have that much sold out games. That helped physical games stay in the market for a while.
Dr.Morris79
Member
One notch closer to not owning more shit
Yay.
Yay.
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kingfey
Banned
When did you ever own a shit?
1 license fight, and the game gets plugged out from support. There is no ownership at all.
Dr.Morris79
Member
I'm not going to get into the argument that the ten tons of backlog from the 80's to now I have can still be played. Unlike digital only that can be pulled because 'fuck you' ethics.
Beelzebubs
Member
That list does also include FF14 which is very rare to see in physical boxes and also COVID is probably a huge factor.
Bryank75
Banned
For instance in Ireland we had all our retail stores except for necessities closed for a year, they only recently opened back up and there is no Irish Amazon branch..... you have to order from a foreign retailer and our logistics channels were all congested and Brexit cause chaos with imports.
Then you had the Suez canal incident and global issues and overloading of distribution channels.
I don't know why a certain few people here seem to want to kill off physical games.... is it just because your company of choice has a subscription service you worship like some type of deity?
Then you talk about anti-consumer behavior from other companies in the same breath. FML.
Physical will always be the only TRUE ownership option.... nobody is gonna come to your house and demand a physical game back and once the whole game is on there, you can play it forever.
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kingfey
Banned
What will you do, once those devices gets broken?
You are acting as if everything going to be ok for a long time.
I am having issues finding fix for my psp. Any parts of it, is getting harder to get. Once that machine is gone, all my games would useless. A new psp systems costs around 200+ as of now.
Same thing for my OG xbox. Once that system is dead, my physical copies are useless, until I find a new system.
I cant find n64,genesis, or any old hardware system. Even ps2 is hard to find right now. And I can't trust ebay that much.
Both have their own issues. Let's not act, physical games to be that good. Scratch, broken discs, are the danger for those physical, when you own them. Especially when there is kids at home.
cireza
Member
I have no interest in any argument about ownership or whatever. I use both digital and physical games.
I found that the report from SE brought interesting facts about digital sales ratio, that's all there is to my intention when creating this thread.
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mejin
Member
He probably is thinking Xbox sells more digital games than Playstation lol
Javthusiast
Banned
Not only. It would have turned this way regardless, like every other entertainment medium.
DonkeyPunchJr
World’s Biggest Weeb
I’m gonna need a source on this one. AFAIK there was no shortage of physical games and production was not substantially impacted to the point where people wanted physical games but couldn’t buy them.
kingfey
Banned
Are you saying closing down stores, halting down transportation, shutting down jobs won't slow down physical games?
The same thing that needs people in a warehouse. Distribution centers, and for transportation?
Only reason why there is no shortage report, is because they have digital version. And from square data, we can see that people bought as much digital as they can, and less physical.
GeorgPrime
Banned
Square-Enix sales results have been published.
Link
Really puts in perspective those UK retail only sales numbers lol...
Just wait for covid lockdowns to be gone and most people can just go to stores again.
After two years of covid that was expected and not surprising.
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kingfey
Banned
Until publishers feel like it's waste of money printing out physical games. Until then, physical games would be alive.
I am just worried about the garbage they shove on day1, which needs huge day1 patches. That would sting for physical games. We seen that from cyberpunk2077.
Sander Cohen
Member
Some recent stats showed that people tend to buy multiplayer games digital, the ones where you’ll spend potentially 100s of hours or really lengthy ones like AC Valhalla. One and done games, like Sony’s still have healthy percentage in physical (over 30%). That makes perfect sense. Still, I’ll always buy physical first if available because it’s better option in all imaginable ways.
Dr.Morris79
Member
Emulation, if it comes to it. And to be fair it's not even worth arguing, it's better to have the chance of your console failing in ten, twenty or even thirty years than having a non product you cant access in a few years
Why would you even be against this? It makes zero sense.
MasterCornholio
Member
As long as physical copy works and you have a functioning system you can still play it. Unless of course the game needs some sort of patch to be playable.
TheGodfather07
Member
the sales on PS store are great. i was mostly digital too but with PS5 games retaining a higher price i now buy them from ebay for around £30-£40
TGO
Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
Well a lot of games do seem to go out of stock here pretty quickly, which is surprising if they don't sell in big numbers.
not sure if that's because they don't send enough because they not selling or Covid or they don't send enough to force the impatient fucks to buy digitally.
Both are seem logical assumptions
not sure if that's because they don't send enough because they not selling or Covid or they don't send enough to force the impatient fucks to buy digitally.
Both are seem logical assumptions
Fake
Member
Javthusiast
Banned
Jaysus people, digital will overtake even without covid.
Fake
Member
I remember someone saying this back to resetera, but here we are.
Putonahappyface
Gold Member
Even during covid I bought physical games online. I'll never buy digital, never.
Iced Arcade
Member
digital was bound to overtake physical with or without covid influence.
MOTM
Banned
Nobody cares about « ownership ».
Netflix, Spotify, Gamepass, Steam, the above SE numbers prove it.
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TGO
Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
People get confused by this, obviously you do not own the media on the disc.
What you do own is a legal copy to use it.
Just like a Digital purchase, but there is a catch.
when it comes to physical media it conflicts because falls under personal belongings and whole new set of laws pops up.
For example if you downloaded a game and MS removed it from sale, they could disable the ability to play it legally and there's nothing you can do.
But if you have a physical copy the most they can do is not support it anymore.
But everything that was on that disc at the time of purchase can not be taken away from you.
Astral Dog
Member
Its good to know companies are making good money on the digital front, but i hope physical sales recover when the pandemic eventually dies out, i don't wanna see physical games gone 
.
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Oddvintagechap
Member
Ya disc fucks are the minority now.
Ba hahahaha.
Ba hahahaha.
Dr.Morris79
Member
Bryank75
Banned
Those are passive entertainment mediums and Square sales prove nothing when disc was almost impossible or presented many barriers to get.
yazenov
Member
How does ratio works? some people don't understand basic math.
I really cant wait for digital sales numbers so we can put the wishful thinking to rest that Xbox sells more digital than Playstation.
The more probable reason is that Xbox users rent more than they buy with the introduction of Gamepass A.K.A the best value in gaming.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Which is why it's crazy some people are trying to come to some stupid conclusions here. Of course COVID is making digital bigger. So what are these other guys talking about?
Eddie-Griffin
Banned
This is a terrible view, most new physical sales are physical not online. Used physical is higher online.