A new report from Dutch website Tweakers looked at the historical pricing for 16 PlayStation 5 games, comparing the average price between retail stores and the PlayStation Store in the Netherlands. The PlayStation Store was almost always more expensive.

Pair that with the recent news that PlayStation will be ending physical disc production in 2018 with rumor that Xbox will follow suit, and that spells a grim future for game prices. Essentially, the pricing of all games on the respective platforms would be under the control of the individual companies.

Tweakers has a Pricewatch function as part of their site that compares prices on all sorts of products across retailers in Netherlands. Their data shows pricing for these PlayStation 5 games stating in July 8th, 2022.

The above data is for Horizon Forbidden West. It is a unique game in this dataset in that it is the only first party from PlayStation that saw a permanent price reduction in its full price. Every other first party title, when not on sale, returns to its full price that it was at launch, no matter the age of the game.

This is largely true with third-party games as well, though the chances of those seeing a permanent price reduction at some time are higher.

It's also starkly obvious when looking at that data, that even at launch when the prices at the PlayStation Store and retail store are the closest, the average price at retail is almost always cheaper.

Further, if you look at the data for Forbidden West, the game was virtually never cheaper on the PlayStation Store than retail even when on sale.

Those sales are frequent on the PlayStation Store, which is not in doubt. There are, however, long stretches with no sales in-between as well. As the report notes, on any given day you are statistically much more likely to find a game cheaper at retail than at the PlayStation Store.

Of course, it must be noted that Pricewatch is an aggregate of data across many retail stores looking for the best deal. And all of those stores are in competition with each other for their prices.

However, that is exactly what is at issue here as pointed out with the report. PlayStation will be consolidating more power in the price of games with the likely reduction in retail availability of games.

Retail will not be disappearing when physical disc production ceases, but we also don't know what form or how reduced it may be. Retailers will still have the ability to sell a box with a code inside it or in some other form.

None of this considers the second-hand market, which is where gamers could see very drastic price reductions for games. Ending physical discs will completely remove the market altogether.

What all this means is that if someone is forced to buy from a first party store like the PlayStation Store, they will, on average, be paying more for games than if they had retail or second-hand markets available to them.