last year i made multiple articles on physical media and the state it was in at that time, things were looking slightly bleak and i made a bunch of predictions and sensed where i thought it would go based on where it was, things both have and havent went that way and physical media is looking both better and worse than before, but it's all very complicated, for a start getting physical media is getting harder, a week before i write this best buy, the american electronics chain got rid of their physical movie sections, which was a big blow and earlier than that tesco, a local chain in the UK got rid of all of their physical games entirely, even bigger than either was the south of ireland getting rid of all gamestop stores, leaving just cex and smyths for your chain game stores, though thankfully up north physical games stores are still thriving! i can still attest to that myself, this is all very bad and the reality is that it will keep getting worse, GAME is still chugging along but many of their retail stores have moved into sports direct stores, which i do not feel totally comfortable entering alone, gamerboys are one thing but sportsbros, no, i'm good there, i never feel safe in those kinds of spaces as is and this change just makes that worse, though if it keeps the stores around then i guess it's a needed thing, but for how long it will keep them open? i don't know, thrift stores also are starting to stop doing them too, both dvds and games, some still do but it's dwindeling as the weeks go by, which hurts a lot since thrifting is one of my main hobbies, i'll miss doing it once they all stop. pc games also continued to slowly die in this way, we have had a tokyo necro release from JAST and i had my copy of slow damage arrive (goty 2024 contender) but we have not seen all too many outside of these smaller releases as steam continues to slowly kill the industry and make a whole swath of the medium basically inaccessable for me, so thanks for that.

xbox continued their slow decline into nothingness with starfield being a stub disc like all the rest and physical releases continuing to dry up, with their games being basically worthless monitarily and being sold sometimes for pennies in local stores, a friend of mine got samurai shodown for 50p a short time ago and games like redfall already go for under 10, but xbox is also in the brightest time they've ever been, maybe, with rumours hifi rush could be ported to another console, opening up the possibility for ori style physical copies which is big and the best news for xbox in a long time, we also had the usual minecraft multiplats with legends and dungeons too, but as a brand it's dead in the water on its own platform, not that you may want to play xbox games for much longer with the companies insistance on using AI art and writing and rumours the games themselves will also feature this soon, but let's home that never comes to pass and that we do get some of those good games of the last few years on systems with better physical releases, we have also not seen weather or not the slim console lacking a disc drive is true, but signs are leaning towards yes. we haven't seen any other big physical releases from limited companies yet though, quake 2 was the last one there though i do feel like the inevitable quake 3 HD will get one.

sony continues to do better than they don't, many of their GAAS titles ended up not coming to pass and many of their older titles with dlc are all getting physical releases, even including the ps5 version of TLOU2 and the GOTY edition of horizon forbidden west, but it's not all good, the ps5 slim came out and it's disc drive requires an xbox style online check upon its first pairing, effectively making every slim a potential brick one day in the future for physical copies, this is really bad but i don't think it's the worst thing that could have happened, we still have that option and the fact even digital consoles can now have physical releases shows a real sense of commitment from sony that i think does need to be acknowledged, but we will have to wait and see how the ps5 pro handles its disc drive for a more complete sense of what direction sony could go, but for now? i think we're in a really good place, especially if the pro doesn't end up repeating the slims mistake. there also have not been any more alan wake style situations, even baldurs gate got a wide release physical via larians website, we have yet to see weather AW2 becomes a trend but it's not looking to, at least not yet. their sever state is not as good though, with GT sport being made a stub disc as of a few weeks from now, with only its basic arcade mode being playable, leaving you with only its VR mode and some tracks with no progression to play, a sign of things to come for stub discs and releases like GT7.

switch is also chugging along very well, most major games get physical releases weather wide or limited and we have't seen the code in a box epidemic spread, if anything it seems to be less bad than it was this time last year with those segments in stores dwindeling down to 3 or 4 games, vs the dozen i used to see on average last year. all of nintendos games have still been complete on cart bar a bug or two (mario karts dlc being an exception to this as it did not have every dlc on cart) and we haven't seen too many download required games outside of big examples like the MGS collection, but this could get worse now that we're reaching the end of the generation and games get much harder to port in full and sales get lower, which may lead some publishers to use cheaper carts, otome is still doing well though, a new hakuoki translation with both games on cart just got announced as i wrote this even, so i do have hope for the switch and indeed for nintendo in general in 2024, i predict that the switch 2 this year will have a physical cart slot, i don't think it will have a digital version at all. so yeah, not much has really changed since my last writeup, some things got a little worse, some a little better, but it's clear we are on our last real legs here, xbox and pc are dead and gone and ps is teetering, i think nintendo will be good for another gen but it's hard to say beyond that, cherish it while its still good, because it's hard to say how long we really have left.