- Primary Subject: Take-Two CEO comments on physical game discs vs digital distribution
- Key Idea: Why “digital is more convenient” arguments overlook the loss of consumer flexibility and ownership options, even if the industry direction is inevitable
- Status: Opinion
- Last Verified: August 10, 2026
- Quick Summary: The piece responds to Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick’s claim that physical discs “don’t really make sense for the consumer,” agreeing that digital distribution is dominant and convenient, but arguing that this framing ignores what consumers lose in the transition.
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick recently argued that physical game discs increasingly “don’t really make sense for the consumer,” pointing to the fact that more than 90% of Take-Two’s business is already digitally distributed.
His argument is easy enough to follow - modern games already lean heavily on internet connectivity, downloads remove some of the faff of physical copies, and the industry has spent years drifting toward digital anyway.
It also comes at a particularly interesting moment. Grand Theft Auto 6 is set to launch without a standard physical edition, while Sony has separately announced plans to end physical game-disc production in 2028.
Sony’s own figures make the trend difficult to argue with, as 82% of full-game PS4 and PS5 software sales are already digital. The thing is, I don’t think Zelnick is wrong about where gaming is going.
Digital distribution is easier for a lot of people, and I use it myself all the time. What I take issue with is the suggestion that because digital has become dominant, physical games somehow no longer make sense for me as a consumer.
Of course physical games make less sense to Take-Two - it gets most of the upside and almost none of the inconvenience.
Convenient For Me, Or Convenient For The Publisher?
I understand the appeal of digital games - buying one from the couch, downloading it straight away, and hopping between installed titles without rummaging around for a disc is undeniably convenient.
PC gaming has lived like this for years, and I’m not going to pretend physical media is somehow automatically superior simply because I can put it on a shelf. But convenience is only part of what I get from physical games.
A physical copy gives me options. I can shop around between retailers, buy second-hand, lend the game to someone, sell it when I’m finished, or pick it up years later without relying on the price being reasonable on one particular digital storefront.
None of those advantages require me to be sentimental about game boxes (although, yes, I do still think there is something satisfying about actually owning one). Going fully digital strips away most of that flexibility - my PlayStation might contain hundreds of games, but there’s really only one shop in town.
There is no used market competing with it, no retailer clearing old stock at a lower price, and no copy sitting in somebody’s house that I can borrow for the weekend.
That is a much cleaner system for publishers and platform holders, but I’m not convinced it is automatically a better one for players. This is what feels missing whenever executives talk about digital distribution purely in terms of convenience.
Take-Two does not lose anything when second-hand games disappear. In fact, removing those things arguably makes the business simpler.
A used copy can change hands repeatedly without generating another direct sale for the publisher; a digital license stays locked inside an account and storefront.
It’s easy to admire the convenience of this arrangement when you’re the company collecting the money rather than the customer surrendering the options.
Digital downloads are wonderfully convenient when you have fast, reliable broadband and plenty of storage.
They are less wonderful when modern games can comfortably push past 100GB and your connection turns downloading one into an evening project.
Even one of the supplied sources broadly agreeing with Zelnick acknowledges that digital convenience depends heavily on having decent online infrastructure.
With a game as colossal as GTA 6, that distinction becomes much harder to brush aside. I don’t expect physical gaming to make some miraculous comeback.
Zelnick himself has suggested Take-Two could still release physical editions occasionally, comparing their future to vinyl records in music.
That might genuinely be where the industry ends up. I can live with digital becoming the default. But I can also accept the march toward digital without pretending that everything left in its wake was expendable.
Because from where I’m sitting, Take-Two gets cheaper, cleaner distribution and tighter control over how its games are sold. I get fewer choices. Of course Take-Two thinks that sounds convenient.
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