Boxed Video Game Sales Collapse in UK as Digital Revenues Flatten

An anonymous reader shares a report: As music sales and streaming revenue reaches a high of $3 billion -- the highest since 2001, not accounting for significant inflation -- the UK video game market, which has grown almost continually for decades, has shrunk by 4.4%. The most significant decline was in boxed video game sales, down 35%.

Data from Digital Entertainment and Retail Association (ERA) puts the total worth of the UK video game market in 2024 at $5.7 billion, double the music market and behind TV and movies at $6.2 billion. The numbers show a shift in players' purchasing habits that has been ongoing for years, from physical games to digital downloads and in-game purchases in popular, established games such as Fortnite and Roblox. Boxed games now account for 27.7% of new game sales in the UK, according to ERA data.

Third Route

[dbialac]

I buy boxed games for older consoles. They're way cheaper and just as fun, though the graphics aren't as good. It's more about the fun element than the graphics. This might contribute to the decline.

Older

[JBMcB]

They don't even have to be that old. I picked up Skyrim special edition a few years after the original for something like $30. All DLC and graphical upgrades at half the price for the original game alone.

My go-to move now is to pick up XBox 360 and One games at estate sales. They can usually be had for between $5 and $10 each. Still plenty of fun to play. My daughter loves the Kinect games. I picked up the sensor and a half dozen games for something like $20.

What's the point of boxed again?

[fleeped]

Back in the day, you at least had an actual box, interesting/different box art, and some goodies like cloth maps or extra physical things like that. If currently the contents are just a disc and a manual, might as well skip the costs.
These days the only boxes worth having are those for various special collectors editions, and because of the sometimes crazy prices, they're not really worth it.

Re:

[Morpeth]

Agreed. I remember when Neverwinter Nights came out, there was substantial and well made manual, and a really nice cloth map of the game region. I loved those kind of extras, but without them, 'meh'. That said, I'm old school and sometimes I still like having a hard copy of game so that I can play when company X goes under or pulls their servers, etc.

I like how GOG.com handles digital distrubution -- not just the DRM-free part, but you can usually download the actual install file(s) and keep a copy to reins

Re:What's the point of boxed again?

[fleeped]

GOG is amazing. PC market is truly blessed. On one hand, we have Steam where, as DRM stores go, it's incredibly good. And on the other hand there's GOG, whose lack of DRM is very, very much appreciated, including all the extras you mention.

Re:

[Monster_user]

With regards to GoG. I wonder how easy the installers would be to run on Windows 98 or Windows XP. YouTuber LGR (Lazy Game Reviews) has reviewed a project called the "WeeCee", which used Vortex86 processors for retro computing. He has a recent review of a thing called a Pixelx86, which has Windows 98 and Windows XP drivers, and is marketed as a "Retro Gaming PC". Installing from a GoG library onto a Pixelx86 might be ideal.

Re: What's the point of boxed again?

[Little Brickout]

Love GOG but their installers only support relatively recent OS and the games themselves are frequently broken on original hardware in the process of making them run on the new.

Re:

[serafean]

Oh this takes me down memory lane... running around Vvardenfell (Morrowind) with the physical map hung on the wall, with me every so often trying to find where the hell I'm supposed to go to, tracing out the path with my finger. In game indications like 20 steps after the big rock being the best you'd get. Today we have it really easy with points on the dynamic map.

Re:

[Drethon]

Back in the day, you at least had an actual box, interesting/different box art, and some goodies like cloth maps or extra physical things like that. If currently the contents are just a disc and a manual, might as well skip the costs.
These days the only boxes worth having are those for various special collectors editions, and because of the sometimes crazy prices, they're not really worth it.

Yeah, I still love my Fallout NV collector's kit https://www.reddit.com/r/fnv/c... [reddit.com]. Not a lot like that since.

Re:

[dbialac]

The point is you own the media. A game doesn't suddenly go away by you not paying some new subscription fee the game store or developer just came up with, the developer stops licensing the game to the store, or the developer or store goes out of business. Even with disc games I find that rosters won't download on "newer" (as recent as some PS3 games) games and are unplayable as a result.

Re:What's the point of boxed again?

[fleeped]

On PC, buy from GOG and you still own the media. Even if you own the physical disc, modern games can still be "bricked" by stopping servers etc

Re:

[serafean]

and you can back up all installers. I backup on my Linux NAS using lgogdownloader ( https://github.com/Sude-/lgogd... [github.com] )

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[bn-7bc]

That's only useful if the game is single player only, or allows you to frun local np servers that can be connected without need for the developers/steam to run multiplayer middleware (ie player directories and such) which is not that common

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[jakimfett]

Your disc came with a manual?

Mine just came with this advertisement for another game with a QR code printed on the back that pointed to a tracking URL that just redirects to the homepage of the website now, and the publisher keeps DMCAing people who post direct links...

Re:

[Cochonou]

The point is to be able to lend, give or sell the game.
Digital platforms only implement at most a very limited subset of these possibilities.

Pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the point of buying a boxed game if you immediately have to download gigabytes of updates and patches?

Re: Pointless

[illafam]

Switch game cards for the top first party game still retain 75% percent of their value years later on the second hand market.. plus you can share with your friends.. I hope it continues with switch 2

Re:

[Morpeth]

Yeah, going "gold" used to mean something with software - the installation disc(s) were actually a final polished product. I understand the occasional need for a bug fix, but now it's like the boxed game is just a placeholder for the actual game which hardy resembles what's on the disc, lol.

Re:

[dbialac]

If it's just you playing, disable the internet connection when you play it.

Re:

[sanf780]

Many games still require GBs of downloads as optical media does not mean final version of the products. You have the very odd case of a skating game that only had the tutorial on disc. Cyberpunk 2077 has changed a lot since released version. Nintendo Switch, a console you may assume plays nicely without the internet, may require downloads. Metal Gear Solid Collection requires 30GB of downloads for the whole package, as cartridges are expensive. Even worse are the "cloud version" of games that are streamed t

Re:

[dbialac]

See also the Samsung Z-Flip, Z-Flip 3 and 4. All very durable phones because the screen is on the inside. Thanks to an extended hospital stay, my original Z Flip fell on the floor countless times thanks to nurses pulling the tray table away from me over and over, multiple times per day. There isn't a crack on the screen and I still use it as a secondary phone. Then the 5 came out and now the 5 and 6 both have huge screens on the outside that can much more easily break if you drop them. The external screens

Old Big Box Games

[djben1013]

Are doing just fine - many of us elder millennials and Gen X are buying back our childhoods (or the childhood we never had) - I've bought maybe 10 old 90's era Big Box PC games from eBay this year and have been enjoying them immensely. Some of the games are ridiculously expensive, but many popular titles (X-Wing, Baldur's Gate, StarCraft) are available for reasonable prices and will work on modern hardware in DosBox/Virtualization, or on vintage PCs. Unlike modern games, there are no internet requirements

What?

[ledow]

I literally cannot remember the last time I bought a boxed video game.

It may literally be Half-life Orange Box back in the day. I know that HL2 I bought on Steam (even though it was a very big download) because I already knew that the box was pointless as you had to download lots of updates even with the disc.

I have a box of old games at home that I've carried between three different houses in its time. I don't think I've added anything to it in years and the only reason I keep it is because those games d

boxed video game doesn't have the whole install

[bsdetector101]

Games have grown so huge that the whole install won't fit on a DVD any more..... Like another commenter said, have to finish downloading updates then probably has to have an online connection to play !