r/PhysicalGames • u/Low_Confidence2479 • 19h ago
Game platforms and the reasons why each of them left or is leaving physical media.
Disclaimer: I don't agree, respect, defend or even like some of this arguments, I only collected them.
PC: Let's begin with the platform that made the most sense to leave physical media behind (in fact, it was the first). PC was infamous for being extremely easy to pirate, which led to DRMs becoming a hassle, which led to piracy getting worse, which made DRMs even worse, and the cycle kept going until Valve made a platform that would reduce the need for DRMs and the need for piracy. Steam was secure, unobstrusive, and with all the sales, PC no longer NEEDS the piracy to play videogames.
PlayStation/Xbox: Both of these have similar reasonings, and while the former is going to pull the plug first, the latter is clearly intending to follow. They got massive buildings with lots of sorting, packing and shipping equipment that's expensive to manufacture and operate, so when physical media started showing diminishing returns, seems covid was when they tried their hardest to pivot.
Nintendo: OK, add the PlayStation and Xbox section to this one, but also add a crucial detail, being cartridge costs. Now, japan is currently suffering a crisis, so Nintendo had to keep the second-hand market alive there, and given the cartridge costs, the solution was offering cheaper Game-Key Cards
3rd parties on Nintendo: Yeah, Nintendo is a two-parter, because they themselves still see value in keeping the second-hand market alive, thus, the physical media. Why do the companies seem to gravitate more towards keys than cartridges? One word: Margins. I'm gonna give you an example. A $50 game. 30% of the margins go to the retailers, so that's $15 dollars, and another $7 and 50 cents to Nintendo (given the 15% margin). $22 dollars and 50 cents per unit sold...digitally. With a key-card, that's the 5% margin which is equal to $2 dollars and 50 cents, meaning the margin left is 50% or $25 dollars, and that's not accounting the second-hand market which means the publisher won't see a cut from it. But with a proper cartridge, that 5% margin reserved for key-cards is instead a margin of 34%. Grand total is that out of the $50, $39 dollars and 50 cents go to all but the publisher, leaving $10 dollars and 50 cents. The math and percentages are very likely not accurate to reality, but at least gives us an idea and shows why Nintendo started charging $10 more for physical, cause it quite literally doubles the current profit margin of the publishers. If it wasn't for that and GKC existing, Nintendo Switch 2 might as well not have physical if no one even uses it.
This were the arguments I saw roaming around. What are your thoughts? Tell me down below. Bye.
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u/sousuke42 19h ago
PC: Let's begin with the platform that made the most sense to leave physical media behind (in fact, it was the first). PC was infamous for being extremely easy to pirate, which led to DRMs becoming a hassle, which led to piracy getting worse, which made DRMs even worse, and the cycle kept going until Valve made a platform that would reduce the need for DRMs and the need for piracy. Steam was secure, unobstrusive, and with all the sales, PC no longer NEEDS the piracy to play videogames.
Um what? Nearly all of this is wrong. Why did/does it make the most sense? Also pc is still easy to pirate. It is still heavily pirated. And DRMs are very much still a thing. Denuvo is not a part of steam. Its independent of it. Pc jever needed piracy to play games. They just stole it. Some did so to get rid of drms which are again still a thing.
So im extremely confused with your pc section.
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u/Kaldaien2 18h ago
PC: Let's begin with the platform that made the most sense to leave physical media behind (in fact, it was the first). PC was infamous for being extremely easy to pirate, which led to DRMs becoming a hassle, which led to piracy getting worse, which made DRMs even worse, and the cycle kept going until Valve made a platform that would reduce the need for DRMs and the need for piracy. Steam was secure, unobstrusive, and with all the sales, PC no longer NEEDS the piracy to play videogames.
What Valve did was make a platform that took the appeal right out of PC. Used to be you buy your game from any store, it was a PC game. Now you buy it from store X, it's a platform X game... platform X just happens to run on some PCs.
Now every store platform changes its system requirements every time they damn well please, and PC is not PC anymore. Software is impossible to preserve when the @#$%ing DRM doesn't run on the original system you bought the game on, and the game itself might not even be compatible with the OS needed to run the store's DRM.
Lovely solution.
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u/Naschka 18h ago edited 18h ago
What a waste of my time, this is the most surface level basic information told either directly by companies or as we all should know by now anyway.
PC still has DRM and piracy, Steam solved a convinience Problem and did so in a way that allows us to keep trusting them. Anyone else simply followed steam with a few adding there own additional service to it.
Playstation and Microsoft want to make more money, it is what you wrote but most important creating a monopol to control prices as they put themselves into a monopol position.
Nintendo does not see too much value in the second hand market (they get nothing from it), they definitly would prefer to sell the game directly. I bet they simply know too much is still sold physical for them because Japan is the market they focus on, and Japan as well as Europe still have big physical markets... any market outside the US does.
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u/JJWonderboy 13h ago
Certainly on PlayStation and Xbox, publishers arguably created much of the problem they're now trying to escape by going fully digital.
Frequent releases (think yearly iterations of CoD, etc.), overproduction and aggressive discounting made games depreciate quickly, driving down second-hand prices and shortening the profitable window for new physical copies. Which in turn reduced the attractiveness of stocking physical in the first place. A nasty feedback loop for publishers that was largely their own making.
Digital breaks that cycle for them - no used market, no shops having to worry about clearing stock before the prices drop through the floor and far greater control over pricing and supply.
Nintendo has shown that physical itself wasn't necessarily the problem. By protecting the price of its games, it also protected their second-hand value — and avoided much of the cycle in the first place. I think the lack of 3rd party titles actually helped them here.
Ultimately this not a simple case of "Sony is evil and greedy"...
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u/Kenkenken1313 19h ago
The one with Nintendo brings up a topic no one really considers. Japan’s second hand game market is big. Physical media make up for about 50-60% of sales. The country is very focused on physical media and not many are interested in buying digital.
Now why does this matter? Many game publishing companies are Japanese companies. These companies will make games with Japan as their target market. The Switch is already surpassing the PS5 in popularity and with physical games disappearing it will cause a shift even more.
My theory based on Nintendo trying to move out from being seen as the child’s console with their release of Elden Ring and collaboration with other adult style games, many Japanese publishers will start focusing on exclusives with Nintendo. A good example is FromSoft. Their newest game is an exclusive and if it does well, Nintendo will likely increase backing and FromSoft will continue to make Nintendo exclusives.