It’s been revealed that Level-5’s new entry in the Professor Layton series will not be available for physical pre-order in stores on PS5 — it will be digital-only. The Switch and Switch 2 versions, by contrast, will get standard physical packaging as usual, meaning the same title is being treated differently depending on platform. Following the announcement, 5ch’s Hardware/Industry (Geha) board lit up with a mix of reactions: some saying it’s no surprise given the ongoing decline of disc culture, others pointing out the inconvenience of not being able to resell the game if it turns out to be a dud, and still others debating just how high PS5’s actual digital download ratio really is.
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Seems like a pretty normal thing to happen to me.
They didn't even mention Decapolice's release getting delayed — they just quietly changed the release date to 2027 on the official site afterward.
Not getting shelf space in stores was already the writing on the wall.
no physical version is just the new normal now.
I mean, the sales were bad enough that this kind of move is understandable.
Good thing we get to practice for it early.
by next year everything except Final Fantasy will probably be like this.
More like next fiscal year, really.
From April onward it'll be almost entirely download-only.
this is going to become the norm for other publishers too.
Well, PlayStation's digital ratio is pretty high after all.
>Well, PlayStation's digital ratio is pretty high after all.
But the average price for the digital version is something like 3,500 yen (~$23), which means everyone's just buying it on sale, lol. How long are you gonna keep lying to yourself?
Do you seriously think this particular game's digital ratio is high?
On PS5 it's probably under 1,000 units if we're being honest.
you can't even resell it if the game turns out to be trash.
Well, we all saw this coming.
On top of that, Level-5 is a repeat offender when it comes to the 'definitive edition' money grab.
Even in the Layton series, back on the DS they'd re-release minor updates with improved controls,
the 3DS's 'Mask of Miracle' got a later DX edition with extra puzzles and cutscenes tacked on,
and the Katrielle game went 3DS → Switch → Switch again, with a recast voice cast each time.
while PS5 players get no choice and are stuck paying full price with no discount at all.
At the very least they could run some kind of early pre-order sale for the digital version so it's not so unequal for PS5 owners.
There's no upside to putting effort into the PS5 version anyway.
If you want it cheap, just buy a Switch.
End of story, lol.
Unequal how, exactly?
If there were a price gap between the physical and digital versions on Switch, I could kind of see the 'unequal' argument, but choosing a platform that only has a digital version was the buyer's own choice, wasn't it?
If you've got a complaint, just buy the Switch physical version — problem solved, no?
Even with Inazuma Eleven, only the later Switch 2 release got a physical edition.
More precisely, if you want to buy it, play it, and immediately resell it to play as cheaply as possible, it has to be a physical copy.
only a tiny minority (5%) are actually complaining about Layton not having a physical version.
The vast majority of users (95%) buy digital anyway, so not having a physical version doesn't bother them at all.
Isn't that 95% mostly Switch owners? Of course it's not a problem for them, lol.
What grown adult still buys physical copies these days anyway, lol.
Onimusha PS5 edition: 'Yeah… sure.' (ironic dig — the digital-only Onimusha PS5 release reportedly underperformed)
I saw something saying they'll still handle reprints for titles that already got a disc release in the past…
though I don't really trust that.
…Actually wait, PlayStation barely does reprints of old titles anyway, so maybe it's a non-issue, lol.
PS5: 76,530 units / 155,373 units
Switch 2: 19,499 units / 38,793 units
Later ports — Elden Ring, FF7 Remake, FF7 Rebirth:
PS5: 90,017 units / 702,853 units (PS4) / 262,656 units
Switch 2: 27,604 units / 23,428 units / 30,657 units
They keep saying digital's 90%, but does PS5 even have 100,000 users buying this?
The fact that domestic concurrent viewership for a State of Play ("ステプレ") tops out around 100,000 already tells you the ceiling here, especially combined with first-week numbers, lololol.
There's no factory left, so that's just not possible.
If they were willing to outsource production just to keep discs going, they wouldn't be discontinuing discs in the first place, lol.
Well, Sony did say that, for what it's worth.
Though yeah, I think it's unlikely too.
There's no future for it on PS5 anyway.
Background and Key Points of the Discussion
Behind this lies a broader trend: Sony is said to be gradually scaling back physical distribution for PS5 and consolidating toward digital-only sales. Some posters in the thread claimed that ‘reprint production will end entirely in January 2028,’ but this should be treated as unverified chatter circulating on 5ch rather than an official announcement.
The discussion split into two main camps. One side treated the shrinking of physical media as the expected direction things are heading, saying this will simply become the norm going forward. The other side focused on the inconvenience of not being able to resell a digital-only game if it turns out to be a letdown, highlighting the difference in resale value that a physical copy offers.
Opinions also diverged over whether PS5’s digital sales ratio really is as high as 90%, with some posters citing actual sales figures for other titles to cast doubt on that number. That said, these figures were unofficial estimates raised within the thread, not official statistics, and should be read with that caveat in mind.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Geha)) thread “Professor Layton: PS5 gets no in-store pre-orders, digital-only — users left confused.”
