The number of physical Switch releases has been relatively flat, while the number of digital releases has exploded.
The number of physical Switch releases has been relatively flat, while the number of digital releases has exploded.
These divergent trends suggest that the decline in new physical releases is not simply an artifact of consoles like the Xbox One and PS4 nearing the end of their lifecycles. Instead, as a whole, publishers seem to see a physical release as a less relevant market for an increasing proportion of titles.
But the transition away from physical console games is not distributed evenly across all publishers. The largest publishers are much more likely to go through the hassle and expense of a physical release for their marquee titles.
A slight majority of console games from major publishers still merit a physical release.
A slight majority of console games from major publishers still merit a physical release.
Among major publishers, a slight majority (56.4 percent) of distinct titles released in 2021 were available as physical releases. That’s still a major decline from 2018, though, when nearly 80 percent of titles from those publishers merited a physical launch.
(For this analysis, we defined major publishers as those with the most total annual revenue, including: Activision Blizzard, Bandai Namco, Capcom, EA, Konami, Microsoft/Bethesda, Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Square Enix, Take-Two, Ubisoft, and Warner Bros. Interactive.)
With major publishers removed, physical console game releases become relatively rare.
With major publishers removed, physical console game releases become relatively rare.
When those large publishers are filtered out, though, physical game releases quickly become a very minor part of the market. Just 8.1 percent of new games from those smaller companies were available on physical media in 2021, down in terms of both proportion and raw numbers from 2018.
The niche-ening
Looking solely at the number of unique titles released gives an incomplete picture of the console gaming market, of course. Games that merit a physical release tend to be some of the most popular titles of the year and probably attract more total sales than the vast majority of bottom-of-the-barrel digital releases. These release numbers also don’t give any visibility into what proportion of sales go to the physical versions of games that are available as both discs and downloads.