The latest development in PlayStation vs. angry disc-based gaming fans has some numbers getting a lot of people riled up.
Yesterday, Circana’s Mat Piscatella posted some shocking stats that have since sent the ongoing physical disc discussion off the rails. The data shows, across the board, that a majority of players in the US (where Circana fields its information) are buying games digitally.
Specifically, Circana’s information says that just two PlayStation games sold more than 10,000 physical units in the US during the week ending July 11, and only seven have sold more than 100,000 physical units year-to-date.
The post was in response to a Kotaku article about how Marvel’s Wolverine’s latest trailer has been bombarded by angry gamers who are rightfully angry about physical PlayStation games coming to an end in 2028. It’s been the talk of the industry for the past few weeks, and it’s not going away any time soon, so the data was necessary.
The data has been picked up by various outlets and publications across the internet, and articles posted have been met with the same kind of anger and protest that nearly everything PlayStation and its partners have posted since the start of the month have felt the wrath of. Many are saying the numbers are skewed, while others claim that these outlets are being paid by PlayStation to push propaganda.
Piscatella followed up today by re-posting the below chart showcasing a serious downward trend over the past 15-plus years as players have been spending less and less in the US on physical games (even with a slight uptick in the early part of the year). And so I understand why PlayStation wants to ditch physical games, but that doesn’t make it right. And gamers are perfectly well within their rights to be angry about it.
Are physical games not profitable? Of course they are. But digital games let the publisher decide the price, when it goes on sale, and even when it gets a permanent price drop— obviously a better model for making money. And let’s not get anything twisted here: that’s why this decision has been made. Money. And it’s all at the cost of consumer choice.
“The overwhelming majority of volume is done digitally now,” Piscatella said on June 25, a week before Sony’s hugely unpopular announcement. “The second hand market… doesn’t really matter. More than half of all Xbox Series consoles in the US don’t have a physical drive, while over a quarter of PS5’s are the same. We likely have less than a decade left of physical software.”
I think that Sony is hoping the fervor and anger about its decision will go away, or that most people won’t care or notice. Their own numbers are clearly telling them that this is the case, but social media commentary over the past three weeks has shown that there are a number of folks who do care.
Taking away a choice is never the right decision, regardless of what data says. But I worry that these loud protests from gamers across the world will continue to fall on deaf ears as Sony has impressively, if not annoyingly, totally ignored the outrage throughout it all.
