The Daily Populous Thursday June 27th, 2024 morning edition
Authored by playstationlifestyle.net and submitted by Darth_Vaper883

Circana’s Mat Piscatella reckons that PlayStation might go fully digital after the PS6, if trends over the last few years are anything to go by. Xbox is already leading the way, with Microsoft steadily pulling away from physical releases. Piscatella — who is well versed in industry trends and sales patterns — thinks that Xbox players should expect a fully digital future sooner rather than later.

Will PlayStation and Nintendo follow Microsoft into a digital future?

Piscatella offered his thoughts on a digital future in response to a tweet from Limited Run Games, which reveals that there won’t be any “traditional” retail release for Tomb Raider I-III Remastered Collector’s Edition on Xbox.

Folks should probably just get used to this (no physical Xbox versions) across the market sooner rather than later. https://t.co/jKaxTteB36 — Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) June 23, 2024

Indeed Microsoft has been moving away from disc releases, and in some cases, Xbox Series X discs have only contained game keys, requiring a full download to play.

As for Sony, the company has previously revealed that its consumers are increasingly shifting to digital downloads, and in recent years, the sales breakdown between its digital and disc releases has been heavily tilted towards the former.

Piscatella reckons that PlayStation players have one more gen of discs whereas Nintendo players have at least two.

Yep, give PS another gen, Nintendo another 2. — Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) June 23, 2024

Will PlayStation 7 be completely digital? Time shall tell!

shinoff2183 on June 26th, 2024 at 18:24 UTC »

I don't think it'll happen. I feel some publishers will realize that physical is just as important. I know the data says digital sells more. The way I look at it if you have 1000 games 750 of those are digital only and 250 digital and physical are available. Of course digital will be higher and it's similar to what we have.

Alot of these charts also lump in pc, and mobile while those are practically digital only. So sometimes the numbers are in favor of digital out the gate. I'm hoping and thinking Sony just continues to do the same, disk and diskless. There's alot of smaller publishers that have popped up since ps4 and that helps. Even if we get to a point where studios atleast give us an option to pre order off there website it's bot ideal but it's better then nothing.

JamesEvanBond on June 26th, 2024 at 18:20 UTC »

I will be full physical until that day. Honestly though, mandatory online DRM for single player games is a bigger issue to me. That I will NOT support.

tacticalcraptical on June 26th, 2024 at 18:16 UTC »

I don't mind digital so much on PC because you have things to fall back on in order to keep you games if the storefront disappears, servers go offline, etc.

But on a closed platform like most consoles, you are completely at their mercy.