PS5 users prefer physical games to digital ones

PS5 users, according to data reported by Global Sales Data, generally prefer physical games over digital ones, according to what was found in 23 countries covered by the survey by the market survey and analysis group.

This is a figure that seems to be somewhat in contrast with the general trend of the videogame market, in which the advancement of sales in digital compared to physical is constant and progressive, and in particular compared to Xbox, as demonstrated recently by the sales report for Call of Duty Vanguard which 90% was sold digitally on these platforms in the UK.

PS5 in digital and optical reader versions The numbers of Global Sales Data were presented during the GI Live: London conference and reported by GamesIndustry.biz in these hours.

These show how PS5 users continue to prefer physical games instead, it seems: in the 10 months examined, i.e. from November 2020 to August 2021, the analysis has shown a steady majority of product sales on disc compared to digital games . This is with regard to direct comparisons between triple A games by large publishers, mainly.

We are talking about 51% more copies on physical media than digital, in principle. November 2020 was the only month in which digital downloads of full games surpassed retail sales, with 950,000 copies versus 840,000 in the countries surveyed, but after the first month on PS5, the opposite trend was always observed.

By the way, it seems that the gap between physical and digital games has widened more and more, demonstrating how disc games for PS5 are increasingly being purchased than digital games: by the end of August 2021, the ratio of physical to digital games was 3 to 1.

According to Sam Naji of GSD, this apparently opposite trend to the general one of the market is explained by four factors, mainly: the high price of PS5 games, which now reaches 80 euros, pushes buyers to invest more willingly in the physical, which is linked to the second factor, namely the collecting of objects. The third factor is also linked to the sense of investment, since the physical medium allows you to resell the game, or to exchange or lend it.

Finally, the fourth element is linked to the relative novelty of PS5: digital purchases they usually refer to titles that have been released longer on the market, in correspondence with the classic subsequent price drops, but since the Sony next gen console has only been available for a year, there has not yet been a large buying trend digitally with the sales. In this regard, we remember these days the launch of the Black Friday discounts on PlayStation Store.

Source Have you noticed any errors?