Attention, everyone who ordered a physical copy of a video game within the past year: David Braben is coming for your physical games with a hammer. Wait, that’s not quite right; Braben, CEO of Frontier Developments (the source of Elite: Dangerous), is just predicting that the shift from physical games over to digital ones has been greatly accelerated by the global pandemic, pointing to indicators like the surge in digital sales on current consoles.
Of course, Braben’s statements are part of a larger talk explaining how the game industry has proven to be very important during the aforementioned pandemic and has seen excellent sales during the past two months. And even he doesn’t say that physical games will cease to exist completely, hedging his bets by stating that the physical discs will “more or less” go away. It’s clear that he definitely sees the digital buying trend as the new normal, however, which is both understandable in the context of Elite: Dangerous and an interesting prospect for the next few years of games and distribution.
