As far as publishers are concerned, the single greatest cancer they face is the resale market. When a store sells a new game for £60, the publisher makes about £20, and the store gets between £15-20, depending on how they choose to price it. The rest is the cost of manufacturing and shipping. (These are rounded estimates, it varies)
Then, a week later, when someone trades that game in and the store resells it for $40, they get all of that, and the publisher gets nothing.
From their perspective, that’s basically theft, which is why they’ve been trying for decades to put a stop to it, which they can’t, or at least make more money from secondary sales by bundling single-use codes for “bonus” content that really should be part of the main game, which people who buy preowned will have to shell out extra for.
So that’s what getting rid of physical media is all about. If they get rid of the discs and cartridges, that market vanishes.
Please don’t mistake this explanation as an excuse. All of the platform holders have had the means to kill off the retail market and usher customers onto their digital storefronts for at least a decade. All they had to do was pass on even a fraction of the savings they make selling digitally, which cuts out the manufacturing, shipping, and retailer costs, onto the customer. But they haven’t. Games cost the same on the Playstation Store as they do on the Gamestop Shelf. Sometimes more!
They could have used the carrot, but pure greed means they’re now opting for the stick.
Edit, Supplemental Question: This is my first post on Lemmy, and the responses have me wanting to clarify something- Is everyone on this platform fucking mental?
Killing ownership is the objective, killing the secondary market is collateral
I think that big game publishers have found that there’s a real ceiling for what people are willing to pay for games, and direct digital sales are the only way they can drive up their share of that amount.
Game prices have not kept up with inflation over the past 30 years. If you cut the production costs and you cut out the reseller’s margin, that equals more revenue for first-party titles. And it further sweetens the pot for console companies because they can take a cut of third-party titles that go through their stores. (Third-party developers still save on physical production and distribution, so it’s a win for them, too.)
Not to mention the overall move toward software-as-a-service subscriptions across the board. If they can take your one-time $70 purchase and convert it into a monthly $5 subscription fee, now you’re paying $130 for the first year and $60 per year afterward for that game.
I have games from 25 years ago that I still play. I feel really sorry for young gamers because they probably won’t even have the option to revisit some of their old faves 25 years from now.
(I’m working my way through Castlevania: Circle of the Moon right now. It’s not the best entry in the series, but it has its charms.)
Capitalism loves planned obsolescence, artificial scarcity, and rental everything.
Their greatest competition is games that already exist. They want to transition to experiences as the service, to ensure you can’t provide yourself with an experience that doesn’t get them paid. This is much wider than video games, it’s all media, from books to movies to music to videos games to dating and relationships. Controlling everything we value is the goal.
I saw another comment on lemmy that was like “everything you like in life is a market inefficiency”
Same thing happened to the home video market. No more dvd sales and resales. Everything gets funneled into subscriptions.
This killed a lot of Indy films and films that had weak releases can no longer recoup any money via dvd sales. So more of those films simply don’t get made anymore
Weirdly, things are kinda of reversed in this situation.
To address things in backwards, digital platforms have been a massive boon to smaller studios due to not having to front the cost for manufacturing. It allows them to take creative risks and reach broader audiences.
As for the comparison to the DVD and Blu-Ray market, things sort of happened slowly and more “naturally” in that case. The market died because streaming offered a significant value to customers so they moved away of their own accord. It was a slow process and it took years before the downsides became apparent.
With games, the platform holders and publishers haven’t bothered to offer any additional value for going digital, quite the opposite really. So the physical market has endured, and the resale market with it. Instead of learning any lessons or competing on value, they’ve decided to force the issue and just kill off the format itself.
One was a death, the other is an execution.
Sony are stopping production of optical drives, of which the Playstation was a tiny proportion.
So they say
🏴☠️
🫃
The high sees be looking better and better
When I was young we used rent games from the stores. Just sayin
Is everyone on this platform fucking mental?
Many people here are. People will lash out over the smallest thing. There are a lot of cool people too, but I highly advise using the block feature liberally. The jerks can really be a buzzkill as they truly love to judge your entire life by one comment and they truly love to imagine you’re the worst version of you they can imagine. So yeah, strap in. I think overall, the communities here are worth it, but there are times that assholes make me doubt that. Block instances, communities, and users who make you feel that way. It’s definitely a far superior experience to reddit even given the assholes, though.
I just don’t read 99% of people who respond to my comments, I don’t reply to basically anyone and I don’t really check messages. I’m not obligated to do that so I’m not going to, don’t feed the trolls.
Yes, mental.
(it’s a mirror of humanity)
I’ve won so many arguments on this website it’s actually insane.
Congratulations, I think?!
Sorry but I must ban your PSN, XBox and Steam account because of this comment. It’s not my fault. People told me to do it. All your digital purchases are gone Sir.
Bold of you to say “people”.
Your account has been banned by an algorithm.
The algorithm will now take every attempt to communicate why you were banned as “suspicious activity” and ban you again.
Your IP has been logged, and all future accounts will be banned.
Please have your agentic AI log your proof of citizenship with the authorities for review and social re-education.
Sorry but I can’t confirm that you’re human. Place certified PlayStation controller in your mouth, grab your right ear with your left hand, wave into camera with your right hand. Press ready button when you’re ready.
Is everyone on this platform fucking mental?
It happened to PC games. Sure, Steam will do a big sale twice a year, but you hear about people with massive libraries of games that they’ve never played and can’t get rid of. In ye olden times, they’d be in the game shop used bin.
Switch to pc. Walled gardens are inherently problematic.
While usually good advice, that is a pretty tone deaf thing to say to someone complaining specifically about the death of physical media.
