In the United States, the number of new games available on physical media declined from 321 in 2018 to just 226 in 2021, a nearly 30 per cent.

Digital games remained relatively flat from 2018 through 2020. Then, in 2021, that number exploded to nearly 2,200 digital titles, a 64 per cent increase from 2020. New console games available exclusively as digital downloads increased from 75 per cent in 2018 to nearly 90 per cent in 2021.

This seems to suggest that the decline in new physical releases is not simply an artefact of consoles like the Xbox One and PS4 nearing the end of their lifecycles but rather publishers seem to think physical release is less relevant market for an increasing proportion of titles.

Moving from physical console games is not distributed evenly across all publishers. Larger publishers are much more likely to go through the hassle and expense of a physical release for their marquee titles. Among major publishers, 56.4 per cent of distinct titles released in 2021 were available as physical releases.

Compare that figure to 2018, though, when nearly 80 per cent of titles from those publishers merited a physical launch. Physical game releases are a minor part of the market. Just 8.1 per cent of new games from those smaller companies were available on physical media in 2021, down in terms of both proportion and raw numbers from 2018.