UK Supermarket Tesco Stops Stocking Physical Video Games

United Kingdom's big retailer, Tesco has announced that it will stop stocking physical game discs due to the increasing digital sales of video games.

In 2015, Tesco refused to abolish selling physical versions of video games, citing that indie games producers will benefit from the traditional market.

However, due to the accelerating digital downloads of video games, Tesco has decided to forego restocking its shelves once the current inventory runs out.

Physical to Digital Shift in Video Games' Copies

Tesco's decision was based on its consumers' behavior which has shifted "towards the digital entertainment", Gameindustry reported.

According to the data shared by Gameindustry that physical sales of video games were less than 18% in U.K., for games released in June 2023. The data was surprising for retailers as June was the released of big game franchises such as Diablo 4, Final Fantasy 16, Street Fighter 6, and F1 23.

"You can see from market data that online is 75% of the market. Before the pandemic, it was 45%," U.K. retail chain GAME boss, Nick Arran, shared.

Tesco To Sell Cards for In-Game Points

Regardless of the situation, Tesco assured that its branches will continue to carry cards where players can use to add money or points to various games.

Unfortunately, this will only be the remaining involvement of the company in the gaming industry moving forward.

As the gaming industry shifts expects more from the digital sales, more stores might be forced to adapt the same policy in the future.