EA games, such as FIFA, Battlefield and other franchises, will no longer be physically sold in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Scandinavia.
Industry analyst MauroNL shared on Twitter a report from Games Wirtschaft (below), stating that the German company Electronic Arts GmbH will stop selling physical copies of its games in these countriesleaving digital downloads as the only option.
“The current shift from physical products to digital downloads continues to have a negative impact on sales development,” reads EA Germany’s latest annual report. “Revenue from digital downloads is not processed through EA, but through an affiliate.”
We have contacted EA to see if this policy can be extended further.
Electronic Arts GmbH, located in Rheinauhafen in Germany, has announced it will no longer sell physical copies of its games across the supply area in Germany, Austria, Switzerland & Scandinavia.
Games like FIFA & Battlefield can only be bought digitally.https://t.co/y6bEbvHTbz
— MauroNL (@MauroNL3) October 27, 2022
Consequently, EA “will no longer generate any sales of bundled goods,” and the publisher has restructured its business in Germany and scrapped local contracts to adjust to the new business plan.
Buying games digitally has slowly become the norm for many gamers, especially since the launch of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Street Fighter and Resident Evil publisher Capcom said in 2020 that 80 % of its sales were digital, while that same year Cyberpunk 2077 was the biggest digital release of all time.
Industry analyst Dr. Serkan Toto also told IGN in 2021 that “COVID-19 has, of course, been a strong accelerator of that trend, with some brick-and-mortar stores simply being forced to close or generally , people no longer wanted to go out.”
