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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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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.
I’m kind of curious how things like this get tallied. Basically it’s a physical box of the game with a download code but no cartridge.
Xbox is just a subscription rental business at this point, Microsoft doesn’t seem interested in gaming outside of that.
Yup!
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.
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.
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
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.
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.