When will physical video games go away?
One of Sony’s best-ever PlayStation ads is a 21-second video titled, “Official PlayStation Used Game Instructional Video.†It’s a “step-by-step†guide about how to lend your PS4 games to your friends. It has one step: one person hands another person a game box.
The ad succinctly clowns on Microsoft’s original and convoluted game sharing policy for the Xbox One, which let users ditch discs in exchange for daily DRM checks. The idea was so hated that Microsoft walked it back just over a week after the release of Sony’s ad and months before the console came out. The lesson was simple — don’t mess with people’s discs.
But more than a decade later, it’s not hard to imagine a future where Sony’s own ad doesn’t apply anymore.
Physical game sales in 2024 were less than half what they were as recently as 2021, and the market has been in decline since 2008, Circana analyst Mat Piscatella tells The Verge. “There has been a long trend of declining sales in physical games,†Piscatella says. “And now there’s declining distribution with retailers pulling back space, with companies making fewer physical games overall, and with the entire shift towards digit …