Former Valve writer Chet Faliszek, who has worked on games like Portal, Half-Life 2: Episode One and the Left 4 Dead series among others, has offered his own thoughts on the discussions surrounding the end of physical games media. In a new YouTube video, Faliszek said that Sony’s announcement isn’t part of some larger conspiracy. Rather, he said that the market as a whole has been responsible for it.
“You, the consumer, have made a choice, and your choice is for digital,” he said. “I keep seeing this, like, ‘Oh, they should do memory cards. They should do…’ Right now, today, the games we are talking about are available at retail. Today. The used games are available at retail today. And you aren’t going into retail and buying them. So much so, GameStop only has 18 percent of their entire revenue being games. New and used. 18 percent. Of a company called GameStop, that used to do nothing but sell games.”
Pointing to Sony’s own revenue data that indicates that 85 percent of its game sales were digital, Faliszek noted that “there’s no benefit to them tricking you.”
“Why do you think someone’s trying to pull something over on you? That’s why when you say the words ‘corpo’, it just shows that you’re not actually looking at [sales figures].”
“You think that, somehow, they’re benefitting from this. No. They’re reacting to your purchases. They had a system set up, and you said, ‘No, we don’t like this. What we like is buying it digital. We want it instantly. We want to be able to download and play it right away.’”
Faliszek then pointed to a variety of sales reports, as well as the success of services like Game Pass, as evidence of the fact that consumers had a hand in shaping Sony’s decision to end PlayStation disc production. “They’re going to digital because that’s where the consumer’s going.”
“You as consumers are choosing the easiest route to purchase your games. That’s how I do it as well because it’s super easy and convenient. And for that, these companies are changing how they behave. And that’s how the power you chose to use gets expressed back to you.”
Faliszek’s statement falls in line with what Circana’s Mat Piscatella said earlier this month, noting that the week ending on July 11th only saw two games selling more than 10,000 physical copies in the US. Noting that the majority of sales have been trending towards digital, he also said that only seven games have sold more than 100,000 physical copies all year. “Commenting is cool, use your voice and all that,” he wrote. “But commenting is cheap, idk.”
Sony itself said that its decision came in light of market trends, and that the company wanted to shift its business decisions to better align with consumer behaviour. “This is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs,” said the company when it made its announcement.
