Really? Because used media stores are booming all over the place. Stores that sell new and used records alongside CDs, Movies, and video games seem to be in every mid size town I pass through.
Comment on DVDs are dying right as streaming has made them appealing again
Blackmist@feddit.uk 4 months agoPhysical is practically dead.
One by one I’ve seen pretty much any shop that specialises in physical media go bust. Virgin Megastores, HMV, Blockbuster, Game. The media section in my local supermarkets have gone from several aisles of games and movies, down to a single rack of recent releases. Even in gaming, I’ve had my disc PS5 for two years now, and the only thing I’ve put in it was Top Gun on 4K disc. The other games (BG3, Talos Principle 2) I purchased weren’t even available on disc.
Consumers don’t want it in large numbers, so they stop making it.
Olhonestjim@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Blackmist@feddit.uk 4 months ago
The smaller towns like mine feel the effects first. It’ll trickle up.
Game went that way, eventually being taken over by the used section, and now all we have left locally is CEX, which is used only. Most of the prices are about the same as buying new from Amazon. Anything really cheap is often the same stuff in subscription services.
Game still exists, but it’s tucked away at the back of Sports Direct shops in out of town shopping centres, and their main products appear to be plushies and funko pops.
It is dying, and I’m not convinced it can be saved at this point. Who has a CD player any more? DVD players have gone from a £30 box that everyone had to something stuffed in the attic and the apps are built into the TV. A 4K BR player is still £150+ even for a cheap one. You don’t even get Dolby Vision at that price point. I don’t expect the next generation of consoles to have disc drives at all.
Physical media is on life support, and it won’t be long before they pull the plug completely.
Olhonestjim@lemmy.world 4 months ago
The nice thing is that there are millions of discs and players still out there. For anyone who prefers physical media and avoids streaming (this guy!) there is no shortage. Prices could stand to come down. But even if they do quit making them, there are lifetimes worth of vintage media, and newer isn’t always better.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 4 months ago
I’m talking a town of 35,000-40,000 people. There is not a single dedicated new physical media shop here. The most we have is the rack in the supermarkets. It all went online to Amazon, etc, and now it doesn’t look like it has long there either.
And while that old media will last a decent while, it doesn’t last forever. The discs degrade, and fairly soon compared to CDs. Like 25 years or so.
And if nobody is making discs any more, the drives won’t be far behind. It’s full of moving parts, so stock up on them. It happened to floppy discs, it’ll happen to optical discs too.
prole@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
You are really missing out then, because if you know where to look (like psprices.com) you will often find sales on only physical copies at Amazon, Best Buy or GameStop.
I’m talking like significant sales. Like AAA games less than a year old (that still costs $60 on PSN) for $15.99 kind of sales.