This is the German newspaper gameswirtschaft who relayed the news yesterday. Electronic Arts would announce the end of physical games in part of Europe. The countries affected would be Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
In the latest quarterly report from the American publisher, it is explained that no physical copy of EA games will be released in the countries mentioned above. Thus, if you live on this side of Europe, you could no longer buy EA games only in dematerialized form, whether on PC or on consoles.
EA denies
In an official press release, Electronic Arts returns to this information and deny the statements made :
“We have not stopped the physical distribution of our games in Germany, Austria or Switzerland and gamers will continue to be able to purchase our games from retailers in all of these regions. Recent reports to the contrary are an inaccurate reflection of financial information relating to EA Germany”.
A press release that is intended reassuring for CD lovers and which quickly denies a quarterly report of the company. The subject looks quite “touchy” and even if EA postpone the deadline again, isn’t the physical game still doomed to disappear? A large number of publishers are seeing their sales of physical games plummet and their dematerialized versions on the rise. Capcom has for example in the past indicated that 80% of their sales are now digital.
The end of an era ?
We have seen it for a few years now: the video game market in physics continues to wither away. Since the arrival of dematerialized, their sales have decreased, in-store resellers are closing their doors more and more, the market is doing very badly, and COVID-19 has been the latest blow.
A fate nevertheless understandable for several reasons: the current consoles are cheaper if you buy the digital editions, and downloading the games is often faster than going to the store if you have a good connection. The pleasure of opening the box, reading the manual on the road and inserting the CD(s) seems over. A sad but logical future!
But that day hasn’t arrived yet, fellow purists, so keep supporting local physical game vendors while you can!
Only a few days left before the start of Paris Games Week, back after three years of absence. And the 11th edition of the video game fair, called RESTART, should be fun to follow since many manufacturers and publishers are in the game.