Physical games are more profitable than companies realize
Firstly, I want to remind everyone what Bethesda said in February this year (source):
>[...] Bethesda Game Studios [...] confirmed that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered [...] will arrive later this year. This remastered experience will be available digitally at launch, with a physically code-in-box edition planned for a later date.
And yet, we are now getting a physical release of said game. Not only that, the PC version of the game is about 125GB according to Steam (source). So, they ported the game over and decreased the majority of the game (but not everything) down to ~50% of its original size as the biggest cartridge is 64GB big. They are even promoting the game being a truly physical edition (source).
Bethesda is seemingly doing a lot of work to sell a product that nobody cares about. Because only a niche of people care about physical ownership, right? There is no way making great products for consumers could ever be profitable, right? Looking at the recent news from Sony (source), they don't think it is even worth the effort:
>[...] [N]ew games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only [...] as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs.
There really seems to be an industrial wide effort to take away your ownership and gaslight you into thinking ownership of physical games is inferior to the digital counterpart. Well, it is not working.
- ~45% of Nintendo published game sales are physical (source).
- ~75% of Cyberpunk: 2077 sales on the Nintendo Switch 2 were physical (source), recently getting the game to 40 million sales across all platforms (source)
- Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was a huge success e.g. in the UK (source)
- Orbitals is selling amazingly on Amazon (source).
I could keep going, but I think the point is clear. Physical games are the superior way to enjoy video games and they are here to stay, regardless of what companies want you to believe. The consumer is voting with their wallet and some companies are starting to listen. The Nintendo Switch 2 has a great future and will be a cornerstone for future collecting.
Thoughts?
Edit 1: Typos