Game News PS5 / PS4: physical games are now a minority, here are the numbers
Published on 05/26/2022 at 15:05
We’ve known it for a while now: the dematerialized aspect of video games represents the future, to the chagrin of disc worshipers. Sony has just revealed the proportion of physical games sold…
Physical gaming in decline at PlayStation
In the 2000s, the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 began an essential cycle in the era of video games on home consoles: the advent of dematerialized video games. From there, the trend will only have accelerated gradually with a Blu-Ray in decline, to the benefit of digital stores whose sales have increased over the years. It is a fact and it will be difficult to reverse the trend.
Today, in 2022, the digital age has never been so overwhelming. It is in its document reserved for investors that Sony released some very interesting information on this subject: only 20% of revenue from video games sold on PS4 and PS5 comes from the physical sector, the other 80% coming from the digital domain. Suffice to say that the latter should still glean a few percentages in the coming years.
A policy that relies more and more on digital
First of all, it is worth recalling why digital is so strong today. First of all, thee simple change in consumption due to network infrastructures and the ease of use of a digital game ; also followed by the powerful arrival of free-to-play, the numerous PlayStation Store promotions (in the case of the PS4 and PS5, of course) as well as confinements due to the COVID-19 crisis, speeding things up considerably.
Is it a bad thing though? Not necessarily for gamers – the sector changes and evolves to offer new advantages (and disadvantages), it’s even quite normal for an industry – but much more for physical signs, who are definitely struggling to find their account in a sinking market.
In the same document mentioned above, Sony also disclosed its positions for the years to come and, surprise, these do not pass through the physical sector: PC porting, cloud gaming, metaverse, mobile and virtual reality, all sectors that should continue to stifle the traditional sale of discs… not to mention the new PlayStation Plus and its hundreds of free access games .