According to retail data, 35% of Marvel’s Wolverine sales were physical discs. This comes from Ampere Analysis (via The Game Business), which tracks sales data across major markets globally.
The data suggests Wolverine shifted 2.16 million units in September (it went on sale September 15), and a significant portion of those sales were on-disc. In Europe, 51% of Wolverine sales came from the boxed version. Zooming in, more than two thirds were physical sales in France, but two thirds were digital in the UK.
The real question is how much people of that 35% would have bought digitally if no other option were available. That’s what Sony is beating on.
Skullgrid@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
… doesn’t that prove their point?
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I can’t really name many businesses who’d be happy to part with more than a third of their customers.
dudeface@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Not all that third would avoid buying if it was digital only
missingno@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
Would they actually lose those customers though? I prefer to buy physical whenever possible, but I still buy games that are only available digitally, or sometimes games that I just can't get the physical copy of at a reasonable price. Sony's banking on the expectation that people aren't just going to stop buying games altogether in an all-digital future, they'll buy digital once they no longer have a choice.
Goodeye8@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Those numbers are probably inflated by customers “sticking it to Sony” because the purchases are done after Sony announced killing physical.
As for parting with a third (or more realistically a fifth like the former PS boss mentioned), that’s just a simple math question. Is the cost of keeping factories running, studios creating “masters”, keeping the supply chain active, factoring in the retail margin and maybe some other cost factors I don’t remember off the bat. Is all of that worth keeping 20% of the customers around? The profit margin, compared to selling digital directly, is probably non-existent.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Going digital-only is absolutely going to be more profitable for Sony. It’s why they aren’t backing down on this at all. There’s simply no business case for keeping physical games alive.
Skullgrid@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That’s a preference though, not a hard loss
ch00f@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
These customers had the option to purchase a digital copy, but preferred to either drive to a store or wait a few days for a delivery. That means a lot.
Either that, or they don’t have access to high speed internet and relied on the physical copy to get the game in a reasonable amount of time.