@BruceCM According to the shops that Eurogamer asked, stock allocation across US ranged from as low as 13 per cent Digital Edition up to 33 per cent Digital Edition and around 25 per cent in the UK (so you are right).
Well the silver lining is that they're probably not gonna go 100% digital anytime soon. I was thinking they'd try it for the next-gen after this, but I'm guessing probably not with those numbers. Maybe the PS7 goes all digital?
Everyone's missing the real big story here: Bethesda didn't get acquired by Microsoft. Bethesda just acquired a QA department!
@Grumblevolcano A 7bn sale doesn't happen over a few beers a few months after a video went down badly on the net. These negotiations were quietly happening for years. Remember at E3 and XO shows when phil would announce new aquisitions in front of the slide with all the studios under their umbrella and announce that more studios would be joining MSGS for the past 2 years or so? Remember XO19, or was it E3 with Pete Hines at the XBox show doing interviews on how great Game Pass is for them with ESO and Doom? This was already happening and we didn't realize it. The timing of finalization was carefully timed, but like Phil hiding the SeS on the shelf behind him in all the interviews, they've been dangling this potential buyout in front of us for quite some time now. It wasn't a reactive move at all, it's part of their strategy they've been building.
@Eel And how does that make you feel? You want to hurt him, don't you? Talk to me about it.
@Octane Preorders aren't the time to judge physical versus digital. Preorders are the hardcore gamers that want "the best". Sony customers seem to still be very physical oriented (which surprised me tremendously!), a lot of that has to do with, it soulds like in europe you can get physical games cheaper, earlier - not true in the US. But the US dosen't have internet to support all these huge game downloads in much of the country, so digital is literally impossible in many locations here. But all that being said, the hardcore gamers were going to be buying more Xs than Ss, and, it's hard to dell with SOny because it seems they had more disc available 4:1 to buy and a lot of people that wanted digital ended up buying disc because that's what was available.
I'm not sure how Sony shakes out over the holiday with disc vs digital, but with MS you're going to see a shift when it enters mass market and gift giving. The little $300 box will fly off shelves in the mass market leaving X in the dust. Most of the X crowd will be the early adopters overall. S will dominate the landscape at regular retail, and each holiday. PS has a more interesting split because it's literally a choice of discs or no discs for $100. They have a much harder case for selling their digital console. Especially with them announcing high game prices and making the best case they could have made to keep supporting gamestop's used model.
@Dezzy Just wait until December. Soccer moms will surprise little Jimmy with a $300 console...not so much a $500 console. And wait until next December and the December after when all the FIFA dudes, soccer moms, etc are buying, and black friday sales are like $274.99+ 3 months game pass.
@Octane Digital playstations were selling out much faster than physical, largely because there were fewer of them. Every site (US) that I went to, digital was a pipe dream, and physical was what was briefly available. I did score one of each in the end, but the digital one was by far harder to get in the cart, and I lucked out that they were both in my cart when I checked out. Though I fear that makes my preorder less sound, I wasn't going to edit the cart at that point!
I love how people are all up in arms about the Bethesda thing. I don't like corporate buyouts and consolidation either, but it's absurd. For years MS said they dont' care about exclusives. For years, fans said "XBox has no games", "XBox has no exclusives and sony has so many" "There's no reason to buy an XBox", "All they have is Halo, Gears, and Forza, who cares?" Now Microsoft reacts to that and tries to do exactly what Sony and Sony fans seemingly wanted them to do, and now nobody wants that. Sony themselves were saying this generation more than ever will depend on exclusives just months ago as they went on a moneyhatting spree to buy major games. What did they think MS would do, double the amount of Forza games and call it a day? If you keep telling your bigger, richer competitor that their weakness is they just don't have all the awesome IPs and studios you have, do you really think they're not going to try to fix that?
@Grumblevolcano I do think a lot of people will believe Jim Ryan's comments, and that's an unbelievably, incredibly sleazy FUD tactic he's using, leveraging the internet "fake news" rumor mill. That was a line of thinking some people already had before he said it. He knows full well how the internet twists anything and runs with it full speed. He used that with the "Miles Morales is built ground up for PS5, we believe in generations and games to showcase that" garbage. He never said MM was a PS5 exclusive and that it wasn't cross-gen. But he worded it so that people would pick it up and run with it, and run they did. He did the same with the cheap FUD on Series S (which denied Playstation's own history!) and that really, really leaves me with a low opinion of him and his brand. When a company resorts to leveraging the internet mob with sketchy FUD to attack competitor market image instead of promoting their own advantages, it's hard to think positively about what they're selling at all. He's a low class sleaze ball...and he's seriously hurting Sony's image to all but the most loyal fans.
@Anti-Matter PSP Go failed because it was many, many years ahead of its time when few people had internet quality to even use it. And a high price. It was a bad idea. But yes, it's unplayable when the server shuts down. But here's the thing, a lot of modern gamers don't care about playing games in the future. Jim Ryan's "I don't understand why anyone would want to play old games through BC" and Sony fans lapping that up and running with "I don't want to play old games, I'm buying a PS5 to play new games!" There's definitely that view games as disposable. They don't want to go back and play them again, they want only what's new.
But also, modern digital isn't like how Nintendo does digtial. The servers aren't usually "shut down" - if you own a digital XBox 360 game, or a digital PS3 game, you can still download them onto your X360 or PS3. You can still play them on your X Series S/X (but you can't play them on your PS5 because Jimmy decided you shouldn't want to. )
Sure, 30 years from now it won't be like popping an NES cart into an old NES and playing, eventually these games will probably vanish. But it's not as clear cut as "they'll shut the servers down and the games go away." If you buy a PS4 today, your games are still going to be available for a decade or more. If you buy a PS5 in 2026, the games you buy will still be available for a decade or more, unless Sony goes bankrupt. Nintendo's the backward one here....there's no guarantee that will be true with them, and their history shows they like to kill old consoles completely. I'd never buy an all-digital Nintendo until they prove a commitment to preservation. I have no issue buying all-digital XBox, they have a history of keeping downloads and services available forever (you can still register and activate Windows 98 and XP!!) Sony's 50/50, but they're proving they're fairly trustworthy on the digital front as well.
PS3 has been out of production for about 5 years, and so far they haven't hinted at stopping even new game sales let alone downloading existing purchased games. (They did to that with PS Vue videos....but video is somewhat different. ) It's actually somewhat reverse. You can still buy ""new" licenses of PS3 digital games, but the physical games have been out of print for many years.
But one big problem is PS3 games were still "traditional" and meant to be played on the disc. PS4 games, X1 games, and PS5/XSeries games really need the patches to function. You can't play most of these games without the online servers offering the downloads, really. Even Nintendo's moving that way. ACNH suffers from that. If you were to load the game off the cart without the online services, you'd have half a game. Basic things like swimming and fireworks wouldn't be included anymore.
I think there's a lot of pro-con arguments for physical vs digital. But I think whichever way you go, the servers getting shut down would really kill the ability to play most modern games properly regardless of which way you go.
@Octane "Less powerful" Define less poweful. It has half the storage and renders 1080p (they say 1440p output but lets just consider it 1080p for practicality.) That's it. if you need a 4k native output you buy an X. If you don't, you buy an S. You're not really giving up anything but resolution (and yes, half a $220 hard drive......) It's the same as PC video cards. If you're building a rig for 1080 you buy a nice cheap card. If you're building a rig for 4k you buy an expensive card and hope to hit steady 60fps most of time time because 4k consumes mad resources. Don't believe everything Jim Ryan tells you. In fact it's best not to believe much of anything Jim Ryan tells you. Especially if it's about Playstation. Though he, admittedly doesn't like to talk about Playstation very much...
@BlueOcean But Jim Ryan said they had decided on having a $399 price point years ago from the start, and they weren't reacting to Microsoft's price. And Sammy defended it as true since it came from Jim. So it must be true!
The cheap console being the trap isn't unique to Sony. What's unique to Sony this gen is their seeming willingness to put up front just how intensely they intend to tighten the noose. $70 games, 2 year old "remasters", continuing the Sony tradition of really sucky subscription services. Now has been a laughing stock even to the most devout PS fan. And they've announced nothing to fix that while GP keeps improving. That new "all the PS4 hits" included in Plus service ($20 says that's in place of Free Games and they haven't said it yet.)
That service is the most cynical thing I've ever seen. They know they're the market leader. They know most PS5 customers will be PS4 customers and not new converts. They know that program offers no value at all to most of their PS5 customers because most of them already bought those games. It's a great value for newcomers, but newcomers will not be the majority of owners because PS4 already owned the market. It's so cynical it's offensive.
Now, XSeries is really offering tons of value on accessories.....I don't believe any other console other than WiiU supported using prior generation controllers and accessories. X1 didn't use 360 accessories. PS4 didn't use PS3 accessories. No other console did, save Wiimotes on WiiU. That's a heck of an upgrade advantage...I still can use my Elite controllers I stockpiled (tempted as I am by elite 2, I have 2 Elite 1's and they still will work for 7 years...can't complain!) But I dont' knock PS5 on that one. It's a cool plus for XSeries for X1 owners, but PS5 having its own controllers is still "industry standard" and XB is going a bit out of the box. (I do wish XB had motion controllers for shooters though...big wasted opportunity.)
I want to try to like Sammy...I really do. He's passionate about the platform, he runs a fan site...I get it. I just wish he could reign in the obnoxious internet troll level fanboy spin. He's down to picking fights with me without me even tagging him... he makes it so hard to like him at times... Really trying though... I suppose he has a pulse on his market and that's something commendable. It's more than Sony execs can say....
"They didn't show the console unil Microsoft did"
What are you talking about? They still haven't shown most of the console, and we've already bought the thing! Microsoft didn't just show us the new UI, they already delivered it to X1 owners! Sony hasn't even shown theres at all! It's not that I think PS5 is a bad offer (pricing controversey aside, and insane xbox value aside), it's that they're presenting it like it's a bad offer as though it's on purpose!
@Dezzy Agreed. I really thought this gen would push digital super hard and next gen would mandate it. But looking at these numbers, the "all digital future" isn't even a pipe dream anymore. It's just not going to happen in the meaningful future at all. I think that comes down to 3 things. They finally realized ISPs are never going to sustain that everywhere (haven't we been saying that for years?); They realized that they're never going to offer enough storage space with the new SSDs to make that wholly viable; and more importantly they realized that with GP and Stadia and other streaming type services starting up no doubt this gen, physical boxed footprints in stores are a console differentiator they need to keep looking like the "important" platforms in the face of "streaming" as a b-grade experience.
@Eel Ahh..well...I was going to say at least you know the PSP douche got a Vita after that....but...well...
@Octane Thank goodness Sony has a PS3 game to replay prettier, a brand new PS4 game to resell as new while prettier, and Sackboy's big adventure. Not to mention Tickle Me Astrobot. If they had Knack 3, Microsoft would be screwed this gen. Let's face it, both companies came to the table without a real 9th gen launch lineup.
I wonder if Microsoft will charge Sony players for TESO, FO, Skyrim, and Doom PS5 patches remasters, since Playstation fans are into paying for that sort of thing? Then Sammy can complain about how Microsoft is trying to destroy PS by unfairly charging for remasters patches!
So the rumors of Microsoft looking to purchase Sega Sammy are resurfacing again. The reason, "Phil Spencer wants a Japanese developer." Well...he just bought one. Tango Gameworks, as a part of the ZeniMax purchase.
Switch Physical Collection - 1,544 games (as of February 24th, 2026)
Switch 2 Physical Collection - 4 games (as of December 8th, 2025)
@NEStalgia In all fairness, I don't think anyone ever said ''Microsoft should buy Bethesda''. It's great for MS, but I've personally always thought that they should open more of their own studios instead of straight up buying them.
@NEStalgia It's absurd, indeed, because until now it was "Xbox has no games, just Forza, Halo, Gears". Sony don't buy more studios because they can't but they do moneyhatting in order to "steal" third-party games from Microsoft in 2020 and beyond when most people hate these dated dirty moves. Sony has forced Microsoft into getting more studios (competition is good) and improving their first-party offering (which was more varied than Sony's single-player semi-open-world linear quests, anyways).
Bethesda will probably get their QA time and Tango and Arkane may do their thing without fearing not selling enough copies (The Evil Within 2 is a brilliant game but who cares?). As you and @BruceCM said, it's not a horizontal expansion, it's vertical and, in this case, it seems that both parties are happy. I'd be worried if Sony, Google or Apple did something like this but Microsoft? Well, no other company gives players more choices than them: physical, digital, streaming, ownership, subscription, console, PC, mobile.
@Octane
They've got Turn 10 and The Initiative but not sure about others. Sony has had a lot longer in the business to form and acquire studios that now look like original ones so Microsoft has to take shortcuts. It also makes more sense for Microsoft to acqure studios for Game Pass and Microsoft hasn't really got time to develop their own games, they need content for the service to grow it so it becomes a profitible business. Don't forget that they're losing money on it at the moment
@BlueOcean
I agree with you about Microsoft giving customers choices and Phil Spencer has said that Game Pass is not a replacement for ownership but an addition and adding to customers choices. Here's what he said about actually increasing sales :
"When you put a game like Forza Horizon 4 on Game Pass, you instantly have more players of the game, which is actually leading to more sales of the game," he said. "Some people have questioned that, but when State of Decay 2 launched, you saw if you looked in the US at the NPD you saw this game selling really well the month it launched on GamePass.
"You say, 'Well isn't everyone just going to subscribe for $10 and go play this thing?' But no, gamers find things to play based on what everybody else is playing. What's #1 on Mixer, what's #1 on Twitch, what's my friend's list [saying], what are people saying on Discord, they go everywhere to see. When these games hit something like GamePass with all these players, it instantly raises the awareness."
I really think Microsoft are being extremely consumer-friendly now, almost the direct opposite of them under Don Mattrick and the Xbox One debacle. Sony are now looking out of touch with raising the game prices, not communicating with customers (pre-order fiasco) and turning back on their promise of believing in generations when some of their biggest games are now coming to PS4. It's won me back over to Microsoft as I had the original console and the 360 until I got the Red Ring of Death and gave up on them with the Xbox One mess. I've had all the Playstation generations but would only get the PS5 near to the end to upgrade my library and have already pre-ordered my Series S.
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