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The slow death of physical media continues: Best Buy to stop selling DVDs and Blu-ray this year

2K View2024-01-08

Bad news for people who love having a physical collection of their media in an increasingly digital world: Best Buy is the latest retailer that will stop selling DVDs and Blu-ray discs beginning later in 2024.

This reminder comes via Kotaku but was first reported back in October of 2023. After rumors first hit, Best Buy told The Associated Press, "Making this change gives us more space and opportunity to bring customers new and innovative tech for them to explore, discover, and enjoy."

Not all is lost, though. Best Buy will continue selling physical copies of video games, at least for the time being. That said, digital game sales continue to steamroll towards increasing popularity and ubiquity.

One report claimed that a shocking 89.5 percent of game sales in 2022 were digital downloads. One of 2023's most hyped releases (and one of TapTap's top 10 games of the year), Alan Wake 2, controversially chose to go digital only, with no physical release planned at all.

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On the other hand, there has also been an increasing trend of smaller publishers created limited physical releases for indie and retro games. Limited Run Games is the biggest of these, releasing physical editions of everything from Oceanhorn 2 to Streets of Rage 4. Other small print game publishers include Fangamer, who put out a physical version of Undertale, and Strictly Limited Games, who released a physical edition for Knights of Pen and Paper +1.

The shift towards digital isn't likely to slow down, but what do you think? Do you still prefer physical media, or are you ready to get rid of your DVD collection and have all of your movies, TV shows, and video games saved in the cloud?