Ubisoft Executive Says That Physical Sales Might Continue to Decline, But There’s Always “a Collector’s Edition Market”

Ubisoft recently joined arms with Activision for streaming rights to Activision Blizzard properties like Call of Duty for the foreseeable future, and the French gaming giant has now offered some interesting insight when it comes to video game sales – thanks to a new blog post on the official Ubisoft website.

According to Ubisoft’s SVP of Strategic Partnerships & Business Development, Chris Early, digital purchases of games continue to grow at a significant pace. He says that owning physical copies of games (especially Collector’s Editions) would always have a market since people still like to gift physical media over digital counterparts.

“We’re already seeing a significant increase in the digital share of purchases, and people trust that their game’s going to be available to them without absolutely requiring physical media to play it,” Early says.

“There’s a collector edition market. There’s the aspect of gifting physical items and allowing access for people to be able to easily purchase a game in a store and gift them to their friends or family. Some people will always want to own the physical disk. I just don’t think it’s going away. Do I think physical sales might get lower over time? Sure, but will it ever completely go away? I don’t think so.”

It’s an interesting insight, but not a surprising one at the very least. Last year, it was reported that over 94% of 2022’s total video game sales were digital – and total physical game sales revenue was 10% down year-on-year. In a similar vein, over 67% of PlayStation software sales in FY 22/23 were digital.