Best Buy Will End Sales Of DVDs and Blu-Ray Movies in 2024; Rumblings Physical Game Media Is Next (Update: It Has Begun)

As initially reported by The Digital Bits, and then confirmed by Variety, Best Buy will be ending the sale of DVDs and Blu-Ray film and movie media in 2024. Even more worryingly, as reported by The Verge, there are some sources indicating that "Best Buy won’t even sell physical movies online, including 4K titles and special-edition steelbooks." This has been part of a trend at Best Buy to move away from non-hardware sources of tech media as Best Buy discontinued selling CDs and all forms of physical music media in 2018. For fans of film and movies, this leaves small stores and Amazon as the primary sources for physical film media, including steelbooks and special-edition versions of move home releases.

After this news related to Bey Buy broke, Josh Fairhurst, the CEO of Limited Run Games, stated that they had an insider at Walmart indicate that Walmart is moving to explore a similar policy related to physical game media, but the phasing out of physical game media would only target Xbox games initially. If that proves to be true, which for now is unconfirmed, may encourage the current slate of console manufacturers to lean into all-digital video game consoles and streaming even more than they have already. Less in dispute is the point that Fairhurst made about Best Buy and most major retailers throttling down their orders of physical game media, and Fairhurst's claims were supported by others in the industry.

It should also be pointed out that the phase out of physical media has disproportionately impacted different regions of the world than others. For example, Disney announced in July 2023 that they would stop shipping physical media to the entire continent of Australia. Also, with Sony stating that they have no plans on making 8K Blu-Ray drives, that pretty much puts console manufacturers in an odd position when it comes to future proofing or planning their next generation of consoles if they want to consider the presence of physical media. Though, if we are being generous, the failure of 8K as a standard is multifaceted with few still adopting TV screens that support it.

So, what do you think the future holds of physical media in games and elsewhere? Is the next generation the one where we see one of the console manufacturers bite the bullet and go all digital?

I think that the death of physical media is bad even though I have moved almost entirely to digital. Physical provides a few very important benefits. Greater competition in pricing (even though digital games are cheaper to distribute physical games tend to be cheaper these days, which says a lot about how the games market works), the ability to lend or resell, the ability to gift (Xbox and PC have gifting but it's harder on PlayStation or Nintendo; when I wanted to buy my friend's son Li'l Gator Game for his birthday I had to just send his dad a points card).

And, of course, preservation. Games tend to stay on sale digitally for a long time these days but many still get delisted. Say what you want about Marvel's Avengers, but if someone wants to play it in the future they will have to buy a disc unless they have a copy already. And of course I could name dozens of much better games that are delisted, many of which were never released physically and so can only be acquired through piracy.

That being said, I think the actual worth of physical games is much lower than it used to be. A lot of physical games don't even have the full game on the cartridge or disc. Whether that's a day 1 patch, entire games missing from a compilation (happens a LOT on the Switch) or later updates, a lot of games are pretty useless without being patched, making the physical game more of an unlock key than an actual physical copy of the game. You CAN play base Marvel's Avengers if you want, but like half the game's content (free content) will be missing.

So physical games are really more like physical tokens representing games these days. They could be replaced by something else. They're also environmentally not the best, and a pain to store.

The real value in physical games is because digital games stores suck. They don't let you trade, sell, or otherwise transfer games, and because they're mostly closed systems competition is extremely limited, increasing prices. It's not that physical game distribution is good, it's that digital game distribution is bad.

But with most gamers being raised on mobile games, which have never been physical, these days I think physical games will be more and more a specialty item, like vinyl, and will be sold in similar shops in the future.

There needs to be a Steam-like platform for movies, with a good player, access to special features and the ability to watch offline. I know movie distributors are scared of technology and each other, but they're missing out where games publishers are cashing in.

Having the ability to stream a single version of a movie with no subtitles and no options isn't enough. Valve tried to get into movies, but their video player is very bad and the service just wasn't/isn't up to the standard of how they treat games.

I believe physical media still deserves a place in society, but then, I would say the same thing about movie rental places. However, I also mostly moved on to digital, which is why I got a digital PS5. Because most of my PS4 games were digital, and it was one hundred bucks cheaper and backwards compatible. One of the benefits of physical media when it came to movies, was that the best picture quality and sound codecs came from the disc, not a digital stream. This was especially true when UHD disc became available. But many people don't care about that. Just like most people don't care about lossless audio. As long as the video and music is distortion free enough, they don't think about it. As an audio and video head, I do think about these things which is why I play games and listen to music using premium audiophile headphones, but even I'm not THAT dedicated most of the time to get a UHD disc player and just settle for the streams, even though the bitrate is lower which means less visual quality.

It seems weird to bump this, but it feels important enough. Nonetheless, this has officially begun.

@zombiepie: Gee, Zombie, it's like you have some kind of problem with trusting your access to your favorite shows and movies to the loving control of David Zaslav.

I still buy 99% of my movies on DVD. I know it works no matter what, and the content doesn't just vanish when they feel like it

"Most gamers raised on mobile games"

Speak for yourself

What's to stop you streaming something and then to coincidentally start a new recording in OBS?

Oh well, I still prefer physical media for video games and movies.