Report: Some European Game Retailers Have Stopped Stocking Xbox Games

Xbox gamers in Europe may soon have more trouble finding new physical games at video game retailers. Christopher Dring, head of GamesIndustry.biz said in the company’s latest podcast (via VGC) that he heard that some European retailers have stopped stocking Xbox physical games due to low sales.

“I got told by a major publisher just before Christmas, that across Europe, several retailers have started not listing Xbox anymore,” said Dring. “So they’ve just started not stocking Xbox games anymore, Xbox is such a digital console, the physical performance of games is really low, and ultimately when you’re selling a console that most people are just downloading games for, it doesn’t really benefit the retailer very much.”

Just as streaming services like Netflix have hugely impacted the sales and DVDs and Blu-ray discs, the sales of physical games have been in decline in recent years due to more and more gamers moving to digital. However, Microsoft has probably been ahead of this trend with the launch of two disc-less consoles, the Xbox One S All-Digital Edition and the current-gen Xbox Series S.

In a previous interview with Kotaku from 2020, Xbox head Phil Spencer said that he was expecting the disc-less Series S to sell more units than the Series X during this console generation. And according to a leaked Xbox roadmap that was published last year, a refreshed Xbox Series X console with no disc drive may be coming later this year.

With the Xbox Series S and services like Game Pass and Xbox Cloud Gaming, Microsoft has already started to de-emphasize physical Xbox games. Earlier this month, the Xbox team revealed that Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, one of the most-anticipated Xbox exclusives games coming this year will be only available digitally at $49.99.

Last week, Windows Central’s Jez Corden also claimed that Microsoft also “shut down departments dedicated to bringing Xbox games to physical retail” as part of the company’s latest round of layoffs. However, according to him, that doesn’t mean that Xbox physical games are going away as Microsoft could still outsource this activity.

In a reply to Corden’s post, Daniel Ahmad, Director of Research & Insights at Niko Partners suggested that the majority of Xbox gamers have already transitioned to digital games. “There are certain AAA games with 80%+ digital shares on Xbox these days so it’s not too surprising. Indicative of how next gen will be for sure,” the video games analyst posted.

There are certain AAA games with 80%+ digital shares on Xbox these days so it's not too surprising.

Indicative of how next gen will be for sure.

— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) January 25, 2024

A reduced presence of Xbox physical games at game retailers is definitely not going to help with brand awareness. However, this is really where the industry seems to be going. Mat Piscatella, Video Game Industry Analyst at Circana pointed out today that the rate of decline for physical software “has accelerated in the last 12 months, and in the fourth quarter it started to speed up even more.” However, the analyst added that “digital game cards at retail had a very good Q4,” especially Roblox and Fortnite cards. This could well be how the Xbox sections of most game retailers will eventually look like.