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The story
CyberConnect2 president Piroshi posted on X that the disappearance of physical game packaging would be “nothing but good.” He noted that profit margins differ sharply between packaged and download sales, and that over 90% of his company’s own sales already come from downloads. The remark was picked up on 5ch’s console/industry (“Geha”) board, where discussion talked past itself — some framed it as a publisher profit-margin issue, others as a question of user benefit — and the thread grew long with arguments over retail distribution burdens, Japan’s 170-day security deposit system, and the drawback that digital copies can’t be resold or traded secondhand.
“There’s a clear difference in profit margins between packaged and digital.”
“Download sales have an explosively better profit margin.”
“Over 90% of our sales already come from digital downloads.”
Source: x.com / Original post here
What people said
No time for nostalgia about keeping factories running for the sake of under 10% of buyers.
I'd love to actually see CC2's sales breakdown though.
Technically all you have to do is post the security deposit.
Not saying Piroshi actually has the means to do that, though.
You'd think a studio that makes character-licensed games would understand that.
Waiting for Amazon delivery and swapping discs in and out is a hassle either way.
Guess that's why he can say whatever he wants — it's not his problem.
Fuga: Melodies of Steel…
They only keep releasing physical copies because a loud minority like you would rage like crazy otherwise.
It's purely a call to avoid damaging their credibility.
If publishers could skip it without the responsibility falling on their own decision, nothing would make them happier.
If you've ever actually worked a job,
you'd know there are things you shouldn't have to do and don't want to do,
but end up doing anyway because you have no choice.
That should be obvious.
By that logic, download-only titles that never get a physical release outnumber them many times over.
I think that's simply a manpower issue.
Other companies' Switch versions of simultaneous-release multiplatform titles really do turn out awful, but CC2 actually polishes theirs properly.
If rushing it just means ending up with a crappy product, I'd rather they keep doing it the way they do now.
Before we even get to what the publisher wants,
retailers wouldn't want to stock something that's basically a ticking time bomb anyway.
Retailers will stock it if they think they can sell through it.
The real bottom line here is just "because it's CyberConnect2."
They say that with 80-90% of sales already digital,
if they dropped the packaged version,
the developer's cut per unit sold
would roughly double from where it is now.
So why would they throw away doubling that 80-90%
just to lock in profit on the remaining 10-20%?
Until that disconnect gets fixed, the frustration isn't going anywhere.
To begin with, the fact that Sony isn't doing anything like Microsoft's approach of linking physical disc rights to your digital library already gives this a terrible image.
"Abandoning physical disc users" is the kind of thing that could still get someone branded a villain 20 years from now.
And even if it did, would retailers bother stocking it?
It did.
I'm amazed you can say that when they put out a physical version even for an indie-scale game like that.
It gets skewed and disconnected from reality precisely because people lump even indie titles into the download-sales ratio.
The reply to the false claim "most software publishers release packaged games" was "download-only titles outnumber them, don't they" — where did "but exclude indies" suddenly come from?
Then they should just halt packaged shipments right now — yet no publisher stubbornly refuses to keep doing it, do they?
It's the company's own call to make something for the small number of people who actually want it.
No idea if that applies here, but
"release and run" scams are probably going to become a thing going forward…
Then couldn't they just do made-to-order sales through their own website?
Their profit doubles anyway.
Couldn't they just put it in stores too?
Why does it have to be made-to-order instead of sitting on a shelf?
Well, he's the one who said scrapping it is "nothing but" good.
Someone said Sony could just outsource production even if they closed their factories, but it's unclear whether that's actually feasible.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
Packaged games sold domestically in Japan are subject to a system requiring publishers to post a security deposit for retail distribution (including the so-called 170-day rule), which creates real operating costs to keep the master copy in production. Download sales, by contrast, carry no shipping, inventory, or retail-margin costs, so a publisher’s cut is generally said to run close to double — but since the retail price itself doesn’t drop, the actual benefit to users is thin. The thread split along a fault line: whether to prioritize maximizing publisher profit, or to protect people who rely on the secondhand market, collectible value, or who are limited by connection speed or storage space. Some also pointed out that CC2 itself doesn’t handle its own distribution, which colors how much weight to give the remark. And the counterargument that “download-only titles already outnumber packaged ones” is easy to overstate, since that ratio is often calculated by lumping in indie titles — it doesn’t necessarily hold for big-budget, simultaneous-release multiplatform titles.
※This article is a summarized excerpt based on the 5ch (console/industry, “Geha”) thread, “[Good News] CyberConnect2 President Says Scrapping Physical Game Packaging Is Nothing But Good.”
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