If you want your games to be on a disc nowadays, you do have to sometimes jump through some extra hoops. On occasion, some games are out digitally for months before they come to a disc. Also, there are the sales on digital stores, and the whole convenience of them.
Keeping physical games is about to get even harder, according to Circana analyst Mat Piscatella, who in a series of posts on Bluesky explained how Trump’s new foreign import tariffs could really affect physical and digital game prices.
With a 25% tariff on imports from Mexico – where a lot of the infrastructure is for making physical games – it would likely mean a price increase if those games continue to be made there. It’s also possible that to keep parity with physical games, digital titles would increase their prices too.
We knew that Trump’s tariffs were going to affect gaming at some point, but many anticipated that this would mean higher prices on hardware, not software and the discs they come on.