Sony is very well aware of the popularity of physical media for games. 80% of their sales are digital, and cost are higher for physical media, and the share is declining.

Don’t ever think there is a gotcha moment on this issue that Sony wasn’t aware of. They’ve been in this business for 30+ years.

They support physical media until 2028, after which new games will not come out on physical media anymore.
It’s not like Microsoft that tried to launch a new console, that out of the blue abandoned support for physical media.

Yeah, sure, 80% is the number when including games that are digital only.

True, but as I understand it, the sales of physical media is dwindling fast.
Maybe Sony shouldn’t kill it, but let it die out by itself, but maybe that’s what they consider this is?
Unfortunately dropping physical media has many advantages for Sony, but probably not for the customer.
We will see if customers can create a shitstorm big enough to make them change their mind as Microsoft did pretty quickly back when they announced it, because the shitstorm was enormous, and Sony scored huge points on announcing continued support back then.
Kind of Ironic that Sony is the one to end it now. Ah well, maybe this will help Xbox become more competitive again.
But remember a big reason Sony did it back then was to keep Blu-Ray alive. And I don’t think that is commercially relevant for them either anymore.

I’ve heard others say the same. Heard any news from the other provinces?

Indiana Jones on Switch 2, also from them and in that case the only real physical version, seems to be sold out all over the place too.

I think there’s a market there for sure. But I don’t know that we should read too much into it. Could mean there’s a ton of demand, or could just mean they way undershot their estimates for how many to ship.

It’s almost always the latter. Nintendo especially likes to come up short for the first run, because it means they get free press with articles like this. I hadn’t even heard of this game until now.

And they’re not worried about missed sales, either, because anyone who really wants it will have already preordered, so they’ve already made the sale. Anyone who doesn’t care will go home and buy it online. Anyone on the fence will wait until it’s back in stock or give up and buy online. No one is going to give up and never buy it because of this.

I mean, I’d (almost) never buy a digital version of a game I want to play on console. Physical or it might as well not exist. It’s not no one, but it’s not enough people to matter either.

But aside from ‘no one’ being a slight overstatement, I think you’re dead on. It’s good if the physical copy does better than expected or whatever, but it was always going to be a drop in the bucket. Still, hopefully they keep printing them even if small quantities.

But but but Sony said we had to cater to the digital only people, and every physical copy deprives them of three digital licenses!

“Sold out” means nothing by itself. How many did they produce.

Believe it or not, they sold all 20