Last month, November, was a shockingly terrible month for video game sales in the U.S. While we traditionally think of November as a huge sales month what with Black Friday and all, November 2025 was the worst November in video game hardware unit sales, and the worst in physical software dollar sales the U.S. has seen since 1995.
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.
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 discs haven’t been a thing for a long time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Execs genuinely couldn‘t care less about what people want. They are the architects of 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.
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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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.
Go Trump! God I love winning.🙃
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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 discs haven’t been a thing for a long time.
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.
Yes, I could see launch day availability being an issue.
Xbox is just a subscription rental business at this point, Microsoft doesn’t seem interested in gaming outside of that.
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.
Yup!
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.
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.
they need to make a new disc that can handle all that space
SD cards.
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.
Execs genuinely couldn‘t care less about what people want. They are the architects of 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.
Alternatively, the bubble collapses and the video game industry needs to be rebuilt
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…
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.