Tesco to end selling physical games in stores
The days of popping out for a pizza, six pack of beer and a copy of FIFA are coming to the end as UK Supermarket giant Tesco have announced that they will no longer sell physical copies of video games in their stores. The current range will remain on the shelves until it sells out, and after that the only gaming products in store will be cards for digital products such as credit on the PlayStation and Xbox stores.
In the past the supermarkets were the leading sellers of physical media, including CDs and video games, but many stopped selling CD’s a good few years ago and now games have followed.
According to gi.biz, physical sales have dropped dramatically in the past few years, and in June when over 3 million games were sold in the UK, “82% of Street Fighter, Final Fantasy, Diablo and F1 sales were digital“. The best selling physical game was The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Switch games are still popular as physical products.
Given that Microsoft has admitted it lost the ‘console war’ you won’t be surprised by this next set of data:
Year-to-date, 722,000 games consoles have been sold, a rise of 11% on the year before. This is due to the PS5, which has seen sales grow 66% year-on-year. Nintendo Switch sales are down 10% year-to-date, while Xbox sales are down 23%.
Source: GI.Biz
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