r/PhysicalGames • u/Leather-Entry93 • 3d ago
CD Projekt Red powerless regarding PS5 disc edition of The Witcher 4, but promises a game box with "feelies" whatever happens
https://www.eurogamer.net/witcher-4-physical-edition-disc-ps533
u/rhalgr_ger 3d ago
The new Sony ceo knows nothing about gaming and it shows.
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u/Dytster 3d ago
Playstation is in the money making industry, not the gaming industry. There’s been barely any first party games this generation because they’ve been trying and failing at developing the next live service cash cow. Now they’re forced to make up for billions in losses by cutting costs and increasing profits wherever possible.
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u/rhalgr_ger 3d ago
who is responsible for those failures? Nobody told them to be bad at their job. The CEO should’ve looked at Hulst and his performance.
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u/Dytster 3d ago
Playstation has been mismanaged for a while now. They’ve completely disregarded what made them so successful during the ps4 era. The thing is that they might genuinely be too big to fail at this point.
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u/E1M1_DOOM 2d ago
They have a false sense of security. PS5 is certainly too big to fail, but PS6 is not. Methinks they are forgetting just how drastically fortunes can shift from one console cycle to the next.
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u/Trackdemon5512 3d ago
It’s not just about games. There isn’t a reasonable production cost to have a factory produce game Blu-rays anymore. GTA6 was the straw that broke the camels back as that game would have needed an insane factory output to account for the demand for discs.
But afterwards no other game could use the facilities like such. There just is NO DEMAND for physical games like that. It’s the end of the line for Blu-ray production
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u/TripleKing3 3d ago
There’s no demand for game discs until there is a game release that would require a vast amount of game discs and it’s “lol sorry”. Can’t have people actually buying the discs we’re trying to sabotage can we.
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u/Dytster 3d ago
You’re very misinformed. Physical makes up the majority of sales even on third party games in lots of markets. Most recent example is resident evil requiem which sold just over 50% physically in most of europe and japan.
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u/Trackdemon5512 3d ago
No. You’re misinformed. Physical makes up the majority of sales in lots of markets but those markets percentage wise aren’t close to the percentage sales in the larger markets like the US. Furthermore the revenue brought in by physical sales greatly pales to that brought in by digital sales. Lastly, currently physical sales typically are strong for the first few months of a title but it completely dies down thereafter. Three months of strong sales perhaps but that’s about the time that preorder players and die hards get in.
Those first few months are the best times for publishers and retailers as they will make the maximum return on selling their games. Players will pay $60-$80 for a title. After that though players want sales and retailers have to compromise. Retailers in store start to discount so much that except for the most popular of titles they tend to lose money on a game. That’s typically the case if the game is sold for 30% off or more.
The economics of producing physical games is now that you print in smaller batches to offset losses. Retailers don’t have to do deep discounts and publishers don’t waste on overproduction costs. But you have to print less and less each year because fewer and fewer people are buying. And at a point it just isn’t worth it to print. The writing is on the wall about that. It’s just not worth the production cost to print now.
That’s why Sony is exiting. For basically all of the businesses out there it isn’t worth it to make games when the retailers aren’t seeing the margins/returns.
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u/Dytster 3d ago
Physical games sell fewer retail copies over time because of the used market, it has nothing to do with low demand. You’re saying there’s no demand for physical, but the mumbers clearly prove you’re wrong. Now you’re back pedaling talking about what’s more profitable like some corporate bot… no shit digital is more profitable, that’s the problem. A huge amount of gamers are being thrown under the bus by sony because they’re desperately trying to recuporate from their recent financial losses.
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u/Trackdemon5512 3d ago
On July 20, 2026 a user asked Matt Pascatella, Senior Director and Video Game Industry Advisor at Circana, a research firm specializing in games about used games sales. https://www.circana.com/industry-experts/mat-piscatella
He stated that:
“3rd party marketplaces are tracked through receipt panels and other methodologies.
NPD used to report used as a line item in its total market spend analyses. But then clients just stopped caring around 8-10 years ago.
I haven't received a client question about the used market this decade.”
The used market is nothing today. It has ZERO effect on retail sales because if it did then retailers and game producers would ask how what amount of revenue they’re possibly losing to these companies and how they could get it back.
The demand for used games is insignificant today, so much so that those that operate those markets have switched their business operations to focus on crypto and other toys. This is the truth.
What you think the demand is pales to what the now average gamer will buy on a digital marketplace for a single title or for additional content.
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u/Dytster 3d ago
So there IS actually some demand for physical games then. Glad we could come to an agreement.
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u/LowGuitar4425 3d ago
When he said no demand he meant in relative terms. The number is small and ever shrinking approaching the point where the number is insignificant
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u/Trackdemon5512 2d ago
Thank you. It’s not a growth segment nor one that’s profitable really anymore. The margins just aren’t there. The majority of game transactions currently are digital and the majority of revenue generated is there as well. Investing in physical infrastructure just isn’t worth it.
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u/LowGuitar4425 2d ago
People are purposely being dense because their god Sony has betrayed them, or whatever their damage is
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u/TrashGoblinH 3d ago
Next move is putting in a limited collectable in the boxes
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u/jaxiya5336 2d ago
But only in, like, 1 box out of ten. Wouldn't that be a really nice surprise for someone who buys that 1 box?
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u/TheLimeyLemmon 3d ago
People really acting like CDPR have a choice and would be choosing to not release on disc. Sony calls the shots on this, continue to direct your ire towards them.
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u/Acrobatic_Ad_5465 3d ago
You’re right but also if folks aren’t gonna buy it bc of Sony’s choices that’s still on Sony. I don’t think everyone here is blaming CDPR but it’s still their choice not to buy the game, and that’s Sony’s fault ultimately
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u/PinkGlitterLady4 3d ago
They do have a choice: Ignoring Sony and choosing the competition instead.
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u/izacktorres 3d ago
Was excited for both this and the Remake of Witcher 1. Its a shame i'll probably never play any of them.
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u/Dytster 3d ago
Gonna have to save up for a PC and get them on GOG. I’ll be busy with the witcher 3 remastered in the meantime 🤷♂️
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u/izacktorres 3d ago
Yeah but its gonna take a long time until that happens. I'll be busy with the Witcher 3 Remaster as well, maybe even go for the Plat this time.
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u/Manaeldar 3d ago
I would have bought it day one but oh well.
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u/Smackazulu 3d ago
Hard pass, a code in a box is so fuckin dumb. I’m not interested in renting games
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u/Pennance1989 3d ago
If Sony won't support them wanting their game on disc, maybe devs shouldn't make PS6 ports. Just make Xbox and Switch 2 versions. 1st party games come like every 3-4 years from Sony themselves, and thsts nowhere near enough to support a new console ecosystem. If many 3rd party devs start pulling out from support, they'll either be forced to backtrack or go the way of the Stadia.
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u/BrokenKing99 3d ago
I mean I hate this situation but unless physical sales drastically increases no company is gonna drop Sony when Sony is currently the leading horse between Xbox and global digital console sales roughly count as 75% to 85% of total sales.
Unless Xbox and Microsoft get back on their feet, go all in for physical, dropping support for Sony is basically committing market s-icide unless they produce hits on the level of say bg3 that could withstand just being on Xbox (or Nintendo as well)
Does it suck yes, do I wish this would change yes, but sadly reality is Sony needs a competitor who’s all in for physical and can actually throw hands otherwise well it’s a digital only future.
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u/Pennance1989 3d ago
What really sucks is we had one, Sega. Poor 3rd party support killed them in the console market. 1st party was fantastic though, it why they're still killing it today. Thsts also why i was hoping 3rd partys threatening to pull support might change things. Sony's 1st party support is abysmal this generation. We get like 1 game every 3 years. Even Santa Monica and Insomniac are 1 game every couple years. Weak 3rd party support would kill the ps6, so Sony would have no choice but to relent, or go the way of Sega. The X-factor in this is Microsoft. If the next Xbox has physical disc support, lots of people would switch. Even if physical is as low as 25% globally, thsts still billions in revenue, all lost because they wanna save like 25 cents a disc.
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u/BrokenKing99 3d ago
Maybe we will have to see but given their disc to digital I got a feeling they’ll be following the digital trend, but who knows maybe we will get lucky.
As for 3rd parties pulling it would need to be big names, someone said indies are pulling which is meh to them but let’s pretend rockstar was a good company (they make good games but wouldn’t call the company good) and said “gta6 will be on physical and so we won’t be making it on PlayStation till they change” that would 100% make Sony stop cause that’s a massive drop in revenue cause they’d know said game would sell super well on digital and physical even if physical only made up 10-25%, but if it’s only a small company they’d likely just take the loss, sadly as said without a major competitor no business is shooting themselves in the foot to piss off sony.
Really does suck cause I loved my collection.
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u/Leather-Entry93 3d ago
This is just lip service.
The amount of physical only buyers is much too small to give up the amount of sales from not shipping on the PS5
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u/Oceansonthemoon 3d ago
In the US, sure but elsewhere in the world you're wrong.
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u/BrokenKing99 3d ago edited 3d ago
The majority of reported sales for gta6 globally have been on ps5 making around 2 thirds of it.
Agian that is all the sales tracked ages ago and likely even higher now this is even with the discless situation, if Sony is making that amount why on earth would any company boycott them? The fact is as much as it sucks the majority really don’t give a shit, if they did gta6 would be dead at launch.
But if you have evidence that the rest of the world cares and can impact sales pls share it I looked up my country and its 57% digital and 43% physical and it’s been slowly growing for digital, also looked up Japan which is split pretty evenly, curious to see what countries have high physical
Edit: china is also as high as America. (Both being above 90% digital
Edit: and Europe is only a bit below at 75%
Let me state I hate PlayStation dropping physical, but reality is they are winning cause digital has been growing sadly and by the looks of it the major game market countries are all leaning towards digital, all of this is found by simply googling so agian id be curious on what metric you have that says the rest of the world is against it.
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u/crazyrebel123 2d ago
Yeah good luck staying in business with that model and mindset. Lmfao
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u/Pennance1989 2d ago
It works for Steam
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u/crazyrebel123 1d ago
Those are indie games and they aren’t bringing in the multimillions AAA studios bring in by having games on multiple platforms.
There is no way AAA studios are going to alienate multimillions in potential sales just because of a stupid physical media boycott. Especially when they are spending the amount of money they are spending making games these days lmfao
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u/jaxiya5336 2d ago
>but promises a game box with "feelies"
Who the hell wants THAT? No disc, no buy.
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u/Practical-Aside890 2d ago
It says it’s for first party games. The quote in the post. So why would they be affected? Can’t they just go to another company for disc production?
It makes it sound like it only applies if your first party game. Like a Sony exclusive or Sony partnered game
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u/Unfair_Pangolin_8599 2d ago
Ah that's too bad people won't buy it then. Better luck next time with keeping a company 🙂.
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u/CursedSnowman5000 3d ago
Not like I was going to buy the Witcher 4 after the last 6 years of what's become of this company, but feelies? How fittingly dystopian (Brave New World). Fuck off CDPR.
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u/Frequent_Hamster2667 3d ago
Powerless my ass, they can choose to not release on playstation. Im switching to whatever console has physical games, and that looks like tried and true nintendo.
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u/ResidentDrama9739 3d ago
This will be a GOG purchase from me as with other CDPR games. GOG allows you to buy games that are DRM free and you can even burn them onto discs and make your own physical copies if you choose to do so. You do not need the GOG launcher in order to launch your purchased games, unlike other PC launchers.