Sorry, physical game collectors, but a digital only future looks more likely than ever as US physical sales have apparently halved since 2021

Things aren’t looking good for physical game collectors, as it appears that sales for physical copies have halved in the US over the past four years.

It’s been pretty clear that the games industry has been headed towards a digital-only world for a while now. Both Sony and Microsoft opted to release disc-drive-less versions of their consoles with the PS5 Slim and Xbox Series S this generation, and the PS5 Pro, a beefier version of the more popular console, doesn’t have one either (though you can buy one separately). But thanks to some statistics from Circana’s Mat Piscatella, it’s a bit clearer just how close we are to physical games being a complete thing of the past – well, unless the Switch 2 has anything to say about it.

The rate of decline in US physical video game software spending accelerated in 2024. Spending on physical video game software in the US has been cut in more than half since 2021 and is now more than 85% below its 2008 peak. We’ll see if Switch 2 can help slow/reverse this trend in 2025.

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Piscatella shared a graph, which you can see above, showing the past 25 years of “US physical video game software consumer spending”, i.e. from 2000 to 2024, showing how spending has changed over the years. It peaked way back in 2008, but from then to last year there’s been an 85% decrease. Not only that, since 2021 alone physical game spending has been cut in more than half, which obviously isn’t a good sign for those of you that like to buy your games physically. It is worth noting that overall spending since 2019, which includes digital software, subscriptions, microtransactions, etc. has increased, so it’s not like the games industry is doing worse overall, right (just forget about those layoffs)?

As noted by Piscatella, there is a chance we’ll see a difference in 2025 with the release of the Switch 2, as Nintendo generally is a physical-first company (we all know how bad it is at online, and the eShop continues to be a nightmare to navigate), so things could be looking a bit different in a year’s time.