According to retail data, 35% of Marvel’s Wolverine sales were physical discs. This comes from Ampere Analysis (via The Game Business), which tracks sales data across major markets globally.
The data suggests Wolverine shifted 2.16 million units in September (it went on sale September 15), and a significant portion of those sales were on-disc. In Europe, 51% of Wolverine sales came from the boxed version. Zooming in, more than two thirds were physical sales in France, but two thirds were digital in the UK.
They’ve publicly declared to their investors that they can’t expect a growth market anymore (perhaps because of RAMpocalypse, or maybe consoles were just tapped out anyway), so they’re instead focusing on maximizing revenue per user.
And how is this contributing to “revenue per user”?
When you can no longer play any game on your PlayStation, unless it’s through them? No lending, and nothing is ever on sale unless it’s approved by them and they get their cut?? Yeah, that’s a monopoly, and even if we don’t like it or avoid the platform, they will make more money from every user who remains…
There are far higher profit margins on digital copies compared to physical.
Why wouldn’t they just increase the prices on physical copies to compensate?
Historically, because they don’t want to piss off their brick and mortar retail partners. Someone like Walmart would just stop carrying their product if they’re getting a raw deal out of it. These days, Nintendo is doing exactly that, but at some point, if Sony’s charging $90 physical for a $70 digital game, you’re already convincing your customers to just stop buying physical anyway, so they’ll also save the money they’d have to spend on manufacturing the disc drive in the first place.
But they’re already getting screwed. Better a $10 price increase than no product at all?
Have you seen how anyone reacts when prices are raised, especially on video games?
Yeah, they whine and complain and keep fucking buying it.