Summary
Physical video game sales are in decline in the United States, and have been so for the past several years. The rise of online video game stores like Steam, the Epic Games Store, and console-based outlets like the PlayStation Store and Nintendo eShop have made buying video games easier over the past few generations, as they eliminate the need to travel to a brick-and-mortar retailer and solve the issue of storage space for physical disks. In more recent times,subscription services like Xbox Game Passhave made things even more convenient by offering a full library of titles for a small monthly fee.
While there are still plenty of gamers who prefer to buy physical disks over downloading games or subscribing to a service due to either nostalgia or concerns about video game preservation, it seems thatsales of physical media have been slowing downin recent years. In 2023, it was reported that only 10.5% of games sold in the previous year were physical, while roughly 89.5% were digital downloads. Although most companies are still committed to selling physical game disks, retailers like Walmart and Best Buy have slowly started to phase out the former in their stores.
The apparent decline of physical video game disk sales has only continued throughout 2024, as reported by Circana Executive Director and gaming industry analyst Mat Piscatella. He recently shared a graph highlighting the past 25 years of video game software sales in the United States on Bluesky (viaVGC), revealing that while overall video game content spending (including subscriptions and microtransactions) has increased since 2019, sales of physical media have been on a steady decline over the past 16 years. Spending on video game disks has been cut in half since 2021, and is currently over 85% below the peak in 2008.
Physical Video Game Sales Have Been Decreasing Since 2008
It is worth pointing out that the apparent shift from physical video game media to digital downloads might vary between countries and platforms. Last year, Europe saw a jump in overall digital share from 60% to 68%,Xbox’s digital share shiftedfrom 70% to 75%, PlayStation 5 saw a sharp increase from 55% to 64%, and Nintendo remained at 22%.
Some speculate that Nintendo’s relative lack of new releases in 2024 might have played a factor in last year’s drop in physical sales, and Piscatella has wondered aloud if the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2 later this year could slow down or reverse the downward trend that has continued for almost two decades. Earlier this year,Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawareaffirmed his company’s commitment to releasing physical media, even as he acknowledged the growing shift toward digital downloads.
