Why the Physical Video Game Market Is Suddenly Exploding

Recently PlayStation’s bone-headed decision to end physical media forced me to take stock of the games I own. That’s when I realized that, during one of my recent moves, I had lost a box. Not only were my classic consoles in that box, but so were much of my original PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and X-Box games. Of course, the collector in me went on a quest to reclaim all those missing titles that I had held onto for twenty plus years, only to discover that the physical media market for videogames has gone insane. This was terrible for my reclamation quest, but great for gamers who held onto their physical media instead of going digital. It wasn’t PlayStations decision alone that lit the fire. During my search for my missing games, I realized that this increase began five years ago during the height of the Covid pandemic. The lockdowns forced people to stay home and game more, driving up the use-game market prices, and the steep increase has not ended. Rising Prices: To be fair, many of the games I was searching to replace were actually reasonably priced. For example, I thought that Star War games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and the Battlefront games would be the mos...