近日，一位名為Stian Schultz的獨立遊戲店主在社交媒體上發布了一篇長文求助，詳細闡述了在行業巨頭宣布停止生產實體光碟的背景下，線下獨立零售商所面臨的嚴峻生存危機。
這篇帶有個人視角的吐槽迅速引發了業界的共鳴，揭示了數位發行時代傳統遊戲零售業搖搖欲墜的商業現實。
I run a small game store. Town of short of 80k citizens. My main competitor is a couple of large electronic retailers (famously known for selling games at a loss). I sell a few hundred copies of the best sellers, 20-40 of the smaller (but popular) titles, and maybe sub-10 of some niche stuff. Single player stuff sells better than online multiplayer focused stuff. It's also easier to build customer loyalty with customers who've also bought the hardware at your store.... now, the problem with hardware is that first party hardware, ESPECIALLY FROM SONY sells at a low profit margin. You compete with all the warehouses on hardware and accessories. So you don't really have a lot of profit to gain from first-party hardware sales, just a lot of money frozen in stock that takes a lot of shelf and storage space. Games, on the other hand gives us some regular sales with a profit margin that varies a bit, depending on vendor and whether or not the larger retailers stock them and we have to compete with them. Pre-owned games gives us more profit. Merchandise and certain third party accessories also produces money. Now... if we end up not having NEW games, we'll end up only having pre-owned for older consoles (which is fine, and quite normal for a lot of entusiast stores these days), but the problem with not having NEW games is that we really have no incentive to sell consoles that we don't really have any profit on. This goes for the big retailers too. Which in turn means... price increase on first-party hardware... so we actually can make a profit "on something". Selling hardware at 0 profit or at a loss has been accepted at retail as we've always had a way to win that money through a steady stream of other related products. If we lose the revenue stream from games, we're left with accessories only, and people don't replace accessories as often as they buy new games... And if they go some sort of code-in-box route... physical games without a physical value can't cost as much as proper physical games. This has been clearly communicated to several vendors already, and it's not without reason most releases that are code-in-box are either shovelware stuff, games with sunset physical production or stuff that had unexpected demand and they had to "just do something" to get a physical presence to meet demands... and, again, those have all been cheaper than regular physical releases of the same title or other titles from said vendors catalog.
Stian Schultz經營著一家位於擁有約8萬人口小鎮的遊戲商店，其主要競爭對手是幾家以虧本賣遊戲而聞名的大型電子零售商。
據他介紹，其店鋪的銷售結構中，單人劇情類遊戲比主打在線多人模式的遊戲更受歡迎。
同時，在店內購買過硬體的顧客往往更容易建立忠誠度。
然而，硬體銷售的利潤率極低，尤其是第一方主機，雖然銷量尚可，但實際利潤微薄，大量資金被積壓在庫存中，占據了寶貴的貨架和倉儲空間。
相比之下，遊戲軟體、二手遊戲以及部分第三方配件才是實體店真正的利潤來源。
Stian指出，如果市場上不再有新遊戲發售，他們將只能依賴老舊主機的二手遊戲維持生計。
更致命的問題在於，沒有新遊戲作為「鉤子」，實體店將失去銷售主機的動力，因為銷售主機本身幾乎無利可圖。
這種壓力層層傳導，最終可能導致零售商不得不提高第一方硬體的價格，或者面臨無錢可賺的絕境。
長期以來，零售商們已經接受了硬體銷售零利潤甚至虧本的現狀，寄希望於通過穩定的遊戲和其他相關產品銷量來彌補虧損。
但如果失去了遊戲軟體這一核心現金流，實體店將只剩下配件銷售，而配件的更換頻率遠遠無法與購買新遊戲相比。
此外，如果未來遊戲全面轉向「盒內無光碟」（code-in-a-box）模式，沒有實體價值的遊戲產品在定價上也無法與傳統實體遊戲相提並論。
這篇推文的背景，正是索尼此前引發軒然大波的決定——宣布將停止生產PlayStation遊戲光碟。
而市場數據也印證了Stian的擔憂，據行業分析師透露，截至目前，今年在美國市場實體銷量突破10萬份的PlayStation遊戲僅有寥寥數款。
這一殘酷的數據直觀地反映了實體遊戲市場的急劇萎縮，也解釋了為何廠商會選擇全面擁抱數位發行。
對於像Stian這樣的獨立店主而言，當玩家們的錢包越來越傾向於數位版時，他們的實體店正站在懸崖邊緣。
