It’s getting harder to be a collector of physical games, especially for the Xbox Series X, as several European retailers have stopped stocking their games. This is fairly disappointing, though some would argue that it’s a long time coming, given how the company puts most of its focus on digital releases.
Christopher Dring of GamesIndustry.biz (via VGC) took part in the Microcast, where he revealed that several European stores have stopped stocking Xbox Series games. Dring was informed of this before Christmas, claiming it’s due to how digital the console has been as of late.
“So they’ve just started not stocking Xbox games anymore, Xbox is such a digital console, the physical performance of games is really low, and ultimately when you’re selling a console that most people are just downloading games for, it doesn’t really benefit the retailer very much,” Dring said.
European physical collectors have been going through a lot lately, not just with this news but also with recent reports of GAME shutting down trade-ins. Being able to trade in games was a good way to get specific titles, so the fact they stopped doing this was heartbreaking. Now that we know European retailers might stop selling Xbox Series physical copies, this has proven to be a nightmare for collectors.
Xbox users are disappointed, though the news probably isn’t surprising since the comments given to Dring are fairly accurate. Microsoft has advertised the Xbox Series as a huge digital gaming console, especially with the digital-only Series S model. The fact that Microsoft also introduced Game Pass, which is essentially Netflix for gaming, solidifies their stance on this topic.
US players should still be able to get physical copies of their games, though we do wonder if they’re still buying them. As we mentioned earlier, Microsoft has made it a point to say that digital is the future, hence, people picking up their digital-only consoles.
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The Xbox Series X and Series S are readily available in most gaming stores.