Nogle mener at fysisk salg af spil er en afgørende måde for forbrugere at kontrollere deres ejendom på, eftersom vi konstant ser udgivere fjerne adgangen til digital software, men samtidig lader forbrugervanen kun til at pege i en retning.
Eksempelvis har analytiker Mat Piscatella fortalt GamesIndustry, at han forventer at se en ret markant formindskning af det fysiske spilmarked i USA. Han forudser faktisk at faldet i omsætningen fra salget af fysiske spil kan blive til hele 10%:
"Right now my most optimistic outlook is down about 2%. If you start looking a little bit on the more pessimistic side, you're looking at down about 10%. If things really go sideways, you're looking at a little bit more. There's so much uncertainty when you look at the sales data or look to project this year. There's uncertainty around the hardware. There's uncertainty about the content. Who the hell's making the games?"
Han noterer desuden at de to største succeser i år, Helldivers II og Palworld, kom ud af det blå:
"Helldivers 2 and Palworld have done a lot of heavy lifting early in the year, but we're up against a comp last year with Hogwarts Legacy, which was a massive hit. So we need another game on top of Helldivers and Palworld to try to comp what Hogwarts was doing last year, and it's still doing a year later. The uncertainty level this year is probably the highest I can recall - and I've been around since 2005 - with the uncertainty of what's going to get us to the finish line because we don't have those big games announced that we know. When people are saying 'our slate's going to be light this year,' that's not something that usually happens."