Is the physical market dead? 94% of PlayStation’s profits come from digital

Is the physical market dying? The latest data coming from PlayStation testify to this trend, which is absolutely worrying for lovers of video game collections and retail formats.

Sony’s latest third-quarter earnings show that digital dominates almost completely sales of physical games.

Like Microsoft with Game Pass, PlayStation thrives on its vibrant digital ecosystem of products, services and engagement, especially with a service like PlayStation Plus. Sony’s PlayStation division has released the latest financial data, claiming to have generated $ 4 billion from video games in the third quarter of 2021. The vast majority of this revenue comes from the digital market.

The digital market indeed represents well 94% of all revenue from the PlayStation gaming industry in the last quarter. Sony’s Games and Network Services segment earned $ 4.012 billion from video games, and $ 3.755 billion came from software and digital add-ons. The physical format is limited to 257 million dollars in revenues, testifying the trend now completely turned to digital.

The add-ons also make a good $ 2 billion, thanks to in-game purchases, DLCs and expansions.

It’s easy to see why Sony is chasing the live service games – the company has stated that it intends to launch over 10 in the next few years, and the figures released today speak for themselves. Even Activision, a few days ago, showed that microtransactions and services have become too important a market to be forgotten by large companies. The company, thanks to games like Call of Duty and its other products, has made more than $ 5 billion from microtransactions alone.

For the next quarter, Sony obviously expects other great results from the gaming sector, also thanks to the release of important exclusives. After It wasjust published, it will be the turn of Horizon: Forbidden West, Gran Turismo 7 And GhostWire Tokyo. It will then come in May Forspokenthe new IP from Square Enix that will be released exclusively on the console on PS5.

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