Video Game Physical Software and Hardware Sales Just Had the Worst November in the U.S. Since 1995 - IGN

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• gointhefridge@lemmy.zip ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Good, maybe now prices for them will finally come back down to reality. $500 for a switch is bonkers and $800 for an Xbox of any variety is outright criminal.

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  • thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Prices won’t fall, not until the AI bubble bursts and the related industries shift focus back to consumer-level goods.

    At best, you could hope prices remain steady for a few years and real-world incomes slowly rise to match this new normal.

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    • CosmoNova@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      You think prices will fall now that there are giant new capable data centers everywhere? AAA Gaming will become synonymous with cloud gaming and the hardware to run games at home won‘t be produced anymore. They’ll build even more data centers instead. It‘s a much more useful business model to establish tech feudalism for the overly rich.

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    • Rooster326@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      industries shift focus back to consumer-level goods.

      And how is this going to happen when nobody has any money?

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  • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Actually, I have bad news for you… prices are likely going to go up from the AI bubble plus the upcoming RAM shortage.

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Prices are not going to come down. If they could get a Switch 2 in your home for $300, they would. The component parts are too expensive.

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    • thermal_shock@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      X (doubt)

      They’re too greedy to let things go at cost now, they know parents and fans will get it anyway. Look at parking alone for disney world, like $175.

      Greed has ruined companies. Nintendo won’t sell bubble bobble for NES, I have to find a used cartridge or do without. They don’t sell nor support it. So I use a rom and they cry about that. They don’t get it both ways, fuck Nintendo. I’ll never stop seeding/sharing my massive rom collection, switch games included.

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    • gointhefridge@lemmy.zip ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Switch 2 has a much healthier margin than Switch. Nintendo is actually making money on the hardware this time. They don’t have the lineup or the services to justify the hardware being a loss leader and won’t until probably 2027.

      Here’s to hoping the Steam Machine is $799 or less.

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    • jordanlund@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I was looking at getting a Switch 2 MicroSD card for a gift and shit’s bonkers, yo.

      I get they changed the standard for the Switch 2, but $300 for 1TB?

      www.amazon.com/dp/B0FQJBDLZY

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  • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I don’t think its necessarily the prices that are the issue but what you’re getting for it. Games have historically not kept up with inflation and still cost less than what we were paying for SNES carts in the 90s, but now they’re the 15th sequel of some franchise and are only half finished so there isn’t much draw for customers.

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• jordanlund@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  For physical software, it’s super hard to buy it if stores aren’t stocking it.

  The Xbox section doesn’t really exist at Target, Walmart, or Costco anymore, and it’s on the way out at Best Buy. Naturally that’s going to have an impact on sales.

  Further, Microsoft doesn’t seem interested in physical sales anymore. I probably would have bought Avowed if it existed in meat-space, it doesn’t. I had a really hard time sourcing Indiana Jones and Outer Worlds 2.

  On the hardware side, I already have this generations worth of hardware (PS5, XSX, Steam Deck), and I’m not interested in all the baggage on the Switch 2.

  Plus, hardware prices are up.

  So the surprise would be if sales hadn’t gone down.

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  • Peffse@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    and of course, this will be misconstrued. The executives will shout “look! people don’t want physical ownership!” and the push to digital rentals will continue… and result in even higher prices when they pull a Netflix.

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    • jordanlund@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      If it goes all digital next generation I won’t be bothering. I didn’t leave gaming, gaming is leaving me.

      Cool, cool, plenty of backlog to get through…

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    • CosmoNova@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Execs genuinely couldn‘t care less about what people want. They are the architects this trend away from physical media.

      I’m making the prediction that any hardware that isn‘t essentially just a screen that connects to the internet will become more and more expensive to the point no one can afford them. Major brands that we all know and use today will withdraw from manufacturing end consumer products.

      I‘m guessing 10 years from now virtually everyone will be forced into cloud service subscriptions for gaming because the hardware to run these games won‘t be sold to us anymore. For a while Chinese companies might try fill the void the likes of Nvidia and AMD left but that will be short lived too.

      You will go retro and learn to take care of your soon old timer hardware that will become ever more pricey to fix as spare parts get more rare and ridiculously expensive expensive or you will own nothing and be happy with that.

      Yes this is all speculative but it‘s a vision of the future that becomes more and more obvious to me by the day.

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    • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      This is misplacing cause and effect. The shift to digital has been happening for years now. They cut physical production because fewer people were buying it.

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  • XiberKernel@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Xbox is subscription rental business at this point, Microsoft doesn’t seem interested in gaming outside of that.

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    • CosmoNova@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      The problem is if nobody sells affordable hardware or hardware at all anymore, the only path they can go is cloud gaming. That means from here on onward ownership is dead.

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    • jordanlund@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Yup!

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  • Lemming6969@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Physical versions only have value of they are complete and relatively bug free, and originally purposed to avoid big downloads.

    Nowadays day 1 patching may be the same size as the install or larger negating half the point. The other half is lost because almost everything is a subscription, multi-player, or delivered with too many bugs as a beta test.

    Collecting physical copies is a thing, but is niche.

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    • BigBananaDealer@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      they need to make a new disc that can handle all that space

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  • JordanZ@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I’m kind of curious how things like this get tallied.

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  • Agent_Karyo@piefed.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Further, Microsoft doesn’t seem interested in physical sales anymore. I probably would have bought Avowed if it existed in meat-space, it doesn’t. I had a really hard time sourcing Indiana Jones and Outer Worlds 2.

    If the disc version exists, can’t you buy it online?

    And aren’t console discs de facto installer stubs?

    Just curious, I play on PC where physical disc haven’t been a thing for a long time.

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    • jordanlund@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      If the disc exists, yes, but I’m talking about going to a store on launch day and not being able to find the big new release.

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  • ButteryMonkey@piefed.social ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    This is basically why I’m giving up collecting physical media. I have several hundred games on disc/cartridge, and consoles from most generations, but it’s really hard to find newer games on physical media these days. Most of the good ones can’t be found used, and good luck finding a new copy anywhere.

    And of course all the older physical media is also getting harder to get because people are paying a lot for it now.. like I have some games in the $80-500 range that I paid very little for years ago. I know the used sales probably don’t count to this article, but you can just look at them to see what’s going on with new physical sales. They made whole consoles that don’t have disc drives, so people couldn’t buy used and bypass them making profit, ffs. Of course the physical game market is crashing. They did that on purpose.

    PS5 era is the last hurrah for physical media for me, and I honestly barely even play on PS5 because there’s just nothing to get. I’ve managed to get like a dozen discs for it, and that was difficult. Meanwhile I have easily 4x that for ps4, and prior generations are even better represented. I’d like to get the current Xbox since it’s mostly backward compatible with the one before it IIUC and I have a 360, but I just have no motivation to do so.

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• thesohoriots@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I just want to lick a couple more Switch cartridges fresh out the box. Is that too much to ask?

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  • SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Uh… What?

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    • Skankhunt420@sh.itjust.works ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      They have a bitter taste on them so kids don’t swallow them.

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• FinishingDutch@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  That doesn’t feel too surprising. There’s nothing really new to buy in terms of hardware; likely everyone who wanted a specific console now has one. And others like myself are waiting: I want a Switch 2 OLED, but that’s not available yet.

  And there’s also the fact that many game releases now suck, with no real must-have titles for console to boost sales right now. And new physical titles are expensive.

  It’s just a dip caused by a combination of factors. If GTA VI releases next november, the chart is going to look like a rocket taking off.

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    And there’s also the fact that many game releases now suck

    I don’t think I’ve ever had more great new game releases, personally.

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• Agent_Karyo@piefed.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Worth pointing out that Circana does not fully track Steam (only some, albeit large publishers). They don’t track GOG or Epic at all (they are of course a lot smaller than Steam).

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  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Why would any of that affect physical software? Does steam and gog sell cartridges or discs that I’m unaware of?

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    • Agent_Karyo@piefed.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I got confused but the following:

      While Circana reports that content spending was up 1% year-over-year to $4.8 billion, that’s with subscription spending rising 16% and 2% growth in mobile.

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    • Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I mean Valve sells the Steam Deck(s)?

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  • jordanlund@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    This is about physical sales, not digital.

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• LemmyEntertainYou@piefed.social ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  This will probably be a controversial take but physical media shouldn’t exist in 2025.

  Ownership of games SHOULD exist and so should multiple competing store fronts. We need to normalise DRM free digital copies rather than ewaste blu-ray discs that’ll one day degrade and become useless.

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    There is no digital store for DRM-free digital movies and TV shows, and I hate it. Hollywood’s crying about the implosion of its industry, but they’ve operated as a cartel that stands in the way of stuff like this for a long time.

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    • LemmyEntertainYou@piefed.social ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I thought we were MAYBE heading that way in the days of iTunes but then the oh-so-convenient streaming came along and entirely killed the majority’s desire to actually own movies.

      At least music is a medium that managed to transition to DRM-free digital storefronts, even if it is barely used.

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    • samus12345@sh.itjust.works ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      No legal one, at least.

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    • SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      GOG opportunity!

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  • krashmo@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I agree in principle but digital doesn’t come without drawbacks. It’s pretty difficult to keep a .exe file accessible for 30+ years even if your intentions are good. A service like Steam is a decent solution but that’s still a point of failure outside your direct control. A physical disc is simpler to keep track of in a lot of ways. If it gets damaged you lose one game, not potentially hundreds or thousands.

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    • Agent_Karyo@piefed.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      It’s pretty difficult to keep a .exe file accessible for 30+ years even if your intentions are good.

      That’s not really true. GOG installers are the obvious option, but even many of the games on Steam don’t actually have DRM and can be backed up.

      And if you really want to you can get cracked versions. For older games, there are compatibility projects like DDrawCompat and dxwrapper. The more popular games have extensive usability mods (support for higher resolutions, bugfixes, UI scaling) and really popular ones have modern engines such as Augustus for Caesar III (originally released in 1998).

      For example you can the Windows 95 version of Simcity 2000 Special Edition on Windows 10 (and I believe W11 too) on a 1440p monitor:

      Image

      This is a 30 year old game!

      Don’t get me wrong, I get the point of having physical copies (I have an extensive physical book library), but for video games, digital ownership (be it legal like with GOG or certain Steam games or using alternative approaches) is the way forward.

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    • LemmyEntertainYou@piefed.social ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      There’s nothing stopping you from having multiple backups of your own game installers though if the DRM free options are there. It’s not too unfeasible for people to have dedicated offline storage in the form of a NAS or even just an external drive. Yes this has the same waste implications as discs but they’re at least multipurpose and have a longer lifespan. Obviously we should never rely entirely on a server that’s out of our control for backups to our purchases.

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    • JordanZ@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      For all Steam’s faults…they host games forever it seems. A game I use to play was pulled from the storefront but stayed in your library(assuming you had it prior) because the publisher shut it all down back in 2017. I can still download and launch the game but the servers were gone so you couldn’t really play. Apparently pretty recently people found a way to get bootleg servers up so players were appearing as online again.

      I’ll agree it’s still a point of failure if Steam just up and disappears but I’ve never had a game actually disappear from my library yet. Unlike basically every digital copy platform for movies (digital copy codes from physical copies). Just because you ‘own’ a digital movie doesn’t mean it won’t just vanish one day. iTunes will generally give you a couple bucks if you bring it to their attention that it’s gone but other platforms basically tell you to pound sand.

      We basically have the exe issue with PC games on disc. I’ve got a few of those but most have been community patched so you just copy the cd contents, copy a file or two on top and launch the game for a modern os. Obviously some security risk here if those patched files are malicious.

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  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    In the mean time, while we wait for IP law to fix itself over the course of decades, or probably just never: I have physical copies of most of my games.

    … on an SD card, that I bought, formatted, and moved files onto.

    Steam lets you make game backups, GOG releases are basically portable… make a backup, compress it, put it on a backup drive.

    … and thats all without my pirate hat and pegleg on.

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  • SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    What if usb sticks lasted hundreds of years, were still the same price or cheaper, were faster to read and write, and you could buy games that shipped to you on them, that you could potentially also add patchers onto? Like they would always have the original version on them, but has enough space to periodically add updates on over the years, so that you could revisit them.

    And they were made in a shape that wasn’t awkward. And had good label surfaces. Throw them in a drawer or display them in a stack somehow.

    And you didn’t have to install the game on your pc, you could just run the drive as is.

    This is something we could potentially have in the future, if companies stopped being such short sighted greedy bitches about everything.

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    • yakko@feddit.uk ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      A steady hand on the tiller of society? In this economy?

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  • B0NK3RS@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I have mixed opinions on physical media but. I’m starting to agree with you on this point. In the past I’m all for having the option to buy it on disc/cartridge but when you have to install the game anyway and download a day one patch it kinda defeats the purpose of it. Also offline mode on consoles if just a joke at this point.

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  • HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Almost got me with that hotness but I wouldn't necessarily disagree. In a perfect world, we would just own digital copies free and clear of any remote tampering.

    Trouble is, physical media is relevant now because companies can't nuke your access to it once their licensing deals expire, like they can with digital streaming services and storefronts. Even digital copies are physical, they have to sit on a hard drive somewhere, and even those degrade over time. So let's say we own the hard drive, that's great, but I still need to transfer it once the disk/flash dies. It's unquestionably more efficient than disc media tho.

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    • LemmyEntertainYou@piefed.social ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I guess it’s not so much the discs I’m against (apart from the fact they do deteriorate faster than other types of storage) but the fact that there’s no option to retrieve and backup the data on said discs. Although saying that, most games require huge downloads to install anyway so is there even any benefit or security in ownership of physical media if it’s still useless without a significant download from a server than could theoretically cease to exist at any moment?

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  • lolola@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Shit take. Give me something I can hold.

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• Stupendous@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Worst physical hardware and software sales since 1995 so far. Switch 2 won’t be its first holiday next year and potential price hikes from storage and ram next year

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• Rooty@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  On a related note I had a hankering for playing the Etrian Oddysey games and went to look for it at the Nintendo Switch store.

  Eighty fucking dollars for the trilogy remaster. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum I guess.

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• ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Meanwhile I bought an Xbox Series S and PS5 and a Switch 2 plus a bunch of SSDs all in November lol

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• BigBananaDealer@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  what happened in 1995?

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    The market was just way smaller back then. Video games weren’t a mainstream hobby yet.

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  • SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    PlayStation 1 had only just come to America a month or two prior, and the n64 wouldn’t exist for another year. Basically, it was just arcade games that were popular at that point, some snes games, and some ps1 games in Japan.

    Imagine “gaming” being just donkey kong, street fighter, mario, and contra, and a ps1 cost $300 usd.

    “Gaming” then was about as popular as virtual reality now.

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  • Ashtear@piefed.social ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    First year recorded.

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• Jaeger86@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  It’s like all these overpriced new games have more people waiting for sales, I know I sure have

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• rafoix@lemmy.zip ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  We’re in the middle of the latest episode end-game-capitalism. Of course things are gonna be bad but nobody will blame the wealthy people because their job has become dependent of those same people.

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• londos@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  If games don’t come on physical media, what’s the point of a physical device?

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    What do you play the digital media on?

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    • londos@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Anything. Xbox, PS, PC, whatever. But there’s no reason to be constrained to one device/platform anymore.

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