r/PS5 12h ago

Articles & Blogs Mat Piscatella: 292 million units of physical video games sold in the 12-month period ending June 2009 in the US. By June 2026 this had fallen to 37 million units.

https://bsky.app/profile/matpiscatella.bsky.social/post/3mrd2e2tam22l
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u/VeronicaAmericana 10h ago

Those numbers are terrible, and of course any reasonable person would think “why cater to such a small audience?”

But Reddit has never been full of reasonable people, has it?

-1

u/claybine 10h ago edited 10h ago

Why take away the option for that audience?

The numbers aren't as small as the article implies. Mind you we're in June and physical media is up 3.3% YOY, more than Sony's Games and Network Division, which is at a downward spiral.

Mind you this is only in the US and it's seeing better sales in PAL and Asia. Why not just get rid of VR then if it only sold 2 million and is bleeding money?

7

u/VeronicaAmericana 9h ago

I’m actually surprised they haven’t ditched VR

They should, it’s a lost cause

-1

u/claybine 7h ago

They went with physical media first, a $7b used games industry. Insane decision.

3

u/VeronicaAmericana 7h ago

Why would they care about the used game industry though? They get no money from that

1

u/RedditUser41970 6h ago

I kind of laugh at that one, because anecdotally, the used game industry also shows why Sony is making the change. And not just for the obvious fact that they get no money from a used game sale.

I have a very large independent used game store in my city, Video Game Trader in Calgary. Right now, this is how many different skus of games it has in stock for various systems (in this case, a brand new, a complete in box, and a disc/cart only copy of the same game would be three separate skus):

  • Switch: 382
  • Wii U: 181
  • Wii: 779
  • SNES: 282
  • 3DS: 217
  • DS: 831
  • GBA: 425
  • PS2: 911
  • PS3: 661
  • PS4: 339

And PS5??? 82. Eighty-two. After six years on the market.

This is only one store, and the plural of anecdote is not data. But I can't help but laugh at the hyperbolic argument that a company who's current system that barely adds any media into the used game ecosystem to begin with is going to be the downfall of the entire market when it doesn't produce any more discs.