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The story
Following Bic Camera, reports on 5ch say TSUTAYA has also kicked off steep discounts on PS4/PS5 software. According to a poster who visited a store in person, new copies aren’t just 80% off — some are down to 100, 300, or 500 yen, with a sign on the shelf reading “Clearance sale due to trading card corner expansion/renewal.” The thread split between those who see this as a de facto sign of Sony pulling back from physical PlayStation sales, and those who dismiss it as simple shelf reorganization to make room for trading cards — the debate spilled over into discussion of Sony’s push toward download-code-only sales.
What people said
This is just clearing out old stock
https://tadaup.jp/8MMfJbyO.jpeg
Do you Nintendo fanboys (ブーちゃん, a mocking nickname for Switch loyalists) really think this counts as anti-PS ammunition?
Whatever doesn't sell will just keep sliding down over time — 20% off → 50% off, 50% off → 80% off, 80% off → 500 yen
and with about a year and a half left until then, it'll all be cleared out
If it's just a corner for selling paper download codes, one section is plenty
The leftover space will just become more Nintendo shelf space
Sony doesn't actually wholesale download codes to retailers though, so there's nothing to sell
It's PS Store exclusive
Third parties would have to put out their own boxed releases with paper codes inside themselves
In practice, PS's shelf space disappears from retail stores entirely
When Sony first announced the move to consolidate everything into downloads, they said outright that you'd still be able to buy download codes at retail stores, so customers could keep shopping there
Chains like TSUTAYA don't get to design their shelves based on individual staff preference — they move on orders from head office
If head office says "Sony's asked us to push code sales," the stores on the ground will have to build a proper code section, no question
Did you know? Sony already tried that once, it flopped, and they dropped it
I wonder if retailers will bother stocking it again~
Retailers aren't slaves, you know
TSUTAYA's PS sales were strong because of the synergy with DVD rentals — paper codes kill that synergy
And obviously you can't resell them used either
Paper is a particularly bad fit for TSUTAYA specifically; it's obvious things get worse compared to the disc era
Going all-in on a sinking ship
Even an indie dev putting games on Switch 2 said this
He said he'd been considering a Switch 2 exclusive, but the install base isn't big enough yet, so he's going multiplatform with PS5 instead
Do what you want, but this issue isn't limited to the PS5 — it'll carry over to PS6 too, whenever that comes out
This isn't about one console, the PS5; it's about whether the PlayStation platform itself is coming to an end
That's the scale we're talking about
The gravity of this is on a completely different level from any past crisis
Just release it multiplatform like normal, simple as that
Future: retro game shops refuse to buy the physical copies, and since the consoles themselves are almost all broken, they get refused there too
There's a PC version anyway, so nobody will need it
Decades from now pretty much every other console will be dead too
The Switch will die first, honestly
It's built on an LCD tablet base to begin with, so it's not built to last
Even that famous YouTuber repair guy said the Switch has all kinds of parts prone to breaking — plenty of variety in its failure patterns
There you go erasing the Vita from memory again
The Vita didn't get pulled from the market
They just didn't make a successor because its main target audience started overlapping with mobile gamers
It even got more games released for it than the GBA did
What mobile games even existed back when the Vita launched?
Isn't that exactly what you'd call getting pulled from the market?
Are you being serious right now?
Rentals, CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, books, games
They're shrinking in every single one of those, and unlike GEO they haven't navigated it well — that's really all this is
Are you saying getting into PlayStation was the failure?
So what? They're cutting whatever doesn't sell, and that happens to be PS
But when GEO — the one you say is navigating things well — said they wanted a Switch version of Wilds (Monster Hunter Wilds), you guys review-bombed it so hard the article got taken down
Wow, they're really desperate…
Why the hell does a promo campaign from a used-game chain (古市, "Furuichi") show up as a notification on the console itself lol
That's way too much
This alone is thread-worthy material
You can't expect users who are used to the ○ button meaning "confirm" to go buy a console where ✕ is confirm instead
PS4 users were never going to buy a PS5 anyway, yet here they are so desperate
They were desperate back then too…
PlayStation's domestic market has a well-earned reputation: every generational transition shrinks the market, and migration never goes smoothly
Because that's been seen as a problem, there's a whole history of throwing money at it to fix it
There's a game I've never seen before sitting right next to Freedom Wars
Looked like it had already been picked over, not much decent left…
But for 100 yen a new copy, I figured it's basically just the cost of a case to swap onto my scratched-up used copy and make it look new, so I grabbed a few of what was left
https://tadaup.jp/8Aimo7M3.jpeg
As far as I remember, what else was left included: Sword Art Online for PS4/PS5 at 500 yen, Exoprimal and Custom Mech Wars for PS5 at 300 yen, a Demon Slayer limited edition at 500 yen, and a soccer game at 300 yen
The sign on the shelf read "Clearance sale due to trading card corner expansion/renewal"
My guess is the space freed up from clearing that stock won't go toward expanding the Switch section — it'll just become more trading card space
So it's really confirmed, they're pulling out
Thanks for 30 years, PlayStation
Thanks for the report
That's a full-on withdrawal sale if I've ever seen one
100 yen lol
That's a straight-up stock dump lol
Background and Points of Contention
Sony has been gradually scaling back physical packaging in favor of download-code sales, and retail shelf layouts are easily affected by that shift. What split the thread was the reason behind the sale: one side saw it as a sign of PlayStation pulling back and losing market share, while the other dismissed it as nothing more than routine shelf reorganization to make room for trading cards. It’s worth noting that TSUTAYA has reportedly been struggling across multiple lines of business — rentals, CDs, DVDs, and books — so this sale may be less a PlayStation-specific issue than part of a broader contraction of the store’s overall business. It’s also worth mentioning, as background that doesn’t come through in the thread replies alone, that Sony once tried and then abandoned the idea of selling download codes through retail before, so it isn’t as simple a decision as it might seem.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Hardware/Industry [Geha]) thread “Not Just Bic Camera—TSUTAYA Also Launches PS4/PS5 Clearance Sale With New Copies Up to 80% Off.”
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