#physical-game-copies

#physical-game-copies

"Today I'm announcing I will no longer be making Gaming Historian videos. There's nothing dramatic behind it, I promise."

The rise of the games industry in the 1980s and 90s coincided with the explosion of the home-video business, and the two crossed paths in lots of interesting ways.

As you can see, this cartridge has Hollywood Video stickers on it. Which is interesting. And I wasn't able to find any record of the competitions being done at Hollywood Video. The 1995 competition was a Blockbuster competition. A major competitor, or the major competitor of Hollywood Video.

The price increases are unprecedented, if not completely unexpected. While buying a new gaming console, the year it came out has certainly always been a luxury; aggressive price cuts also made those same consoles much more affordable after just a few years of being out on the market.

Physical media sales, DVDs especially, are experiencing a new burst of popularity. After a decade of freefall, enthusiasm among Gen Z halved a 20 percent sales decline in 2024 to just 9 percent in 2025. Stores have noticed. The Times' Karla Gachet spoke with staff at cultural hubs like Cinefile and Vidiots to discover why 2026 is already shaping up to be their biggest year, with the latter renting a surprising 1,000 DVDs a week.

The announcement has been very quiet, though, and almost zero details have been offered up. We do know that the Warmastered edition... will be getting a native PS5 and Xbox Series S/X release on May 19.

The dev kit and its beta files represent one of the biggest GTA IV leaks ever, providing fans with a firsthand look at all sorts of stuff never before seen or only spotted in early screenshots.

Last year saw the highest vinyl record sales since 1984, signaling a strong desire among music enthusiasts to return to a simpler time of physical media. Even cassette tapes are making a comeback, with major artists including Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift releasing their material on the iconic plastic, four-inch audio reels. Now, self-described "party slam" metal band Party Cannon is taking the nostalgia play - often framed as an act of defiance against greedy and AI-slop-infested streaming platforms - to a new level.

Players who spent money on the free-to-play shooter's battle pass or skin shop were greeted on March 17 with emails from Sony notifying them that money they'd spent on the game had been returned to their accounts. It's unclear if everyone who ever spent money on is getting it back or only those players who invested after Wildlight Entertainment announced layoffs just a few weeks after launch.

While the PlayStation 4 was considered jailbroken by 2016, the Xbox One has remained invulnerable since its release on November 22, 2013. Well, that is until very recently, as Markus 'Doom' Gaasedelen just showcased a newly discovered 'Bliss' exploit at RE//verse 2026.

Publisher Konami and developer Bloober Team confirmed Thursday on their social media channels that Silent Hill 2 remake had reached 5 million players. The number doesn't strictly represent unit sales as it includes players accessing the game through subscription services.

In the UK, 70 may not gurantee quality, but it tends to mean you are getting a blockbuster or "AAA" - a big-budget game made by a large team, built around cutting-edge graphics, sprawling worlds and dozens of hours of gameplay. In 2025 Nintendo set a new benchmark for game prices when it listed major Switch titles such as Mario Kart World at 74.99 (launching in the US at $79.99).

30 years ago chronicled a generational conflict between an old-timey pull-string doll and a fancy new one with buttons. The two toys learned to get along. This week a trailer for showing both toys enacting a against tablets. While I agree on the potential detriments of excessive screen-time, it is telling how the creators and intended audience now identify less with the kid playing with toys and more with the adult who just spent all of dinner hearing about ' butlerian jihad looksmaxxing.'

Returning to old games isn't always easy. Depending on how old the game is, you might run into various problems, including unusual controls or compatibility issues. Another common point of friction you might encounter is an older game running poorly. This can make it a slog to replay some of the modern classics, even if they're just a decade or so old. So I'm happy to see Ubisoft going back and updating performance in games like Far Cry Primal and Assassin's Creed Unity.

There has been a demo renaissance in the last few years, and we couldn't be happier. Demos have been a part of video game history for a long time, but whether or not they've been good for sales has been up in the air for quite some time. Fortunately, in the last couple weeks we've gotten a Dragon Quest 7: Reimagined and Final Fantasy 7 demo for Switch 2.

For decades, competitive multiplayer games have existed, and the concept of a game that can't be "finished" has been around for about as long as games themselves. But when I talk about the games that undermine the very concept of a backlog, I'm not talking about online-only PVP titles like Arc Raiders or Team Fortress 2. I'm instead talking about the growing list of live-service games, many of which can be played solo, that have campaigns with "endings" but also keep growing,

But what has a lot of people online talking is the new map, Meltdown. This map, set inside a nuclear power plant facility, was extremely popular in the original Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 back in 2012 on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC, where I spent many hours playing it. So naturally, I was excited for its return in BLOPS7. But, well, this ain't exactly the same Meltdown from 14 years ago.