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Rumor: Target supposedly will stop selling physical media in-store and online by 2025
- Thread starter IDontBeatGames
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Yeah, I agree.
I'm a toy collector, and I miss the fun of hunting for new things. Going around to several stores to try to find what you're looking for, and then the thrill of finding it. Making a pre-order and then having it show up a few months later just isn't the same at all.
You're not wrong. The stores aren't going to go away.
The problem is all the fun stuff is going away.
Like it used to be go there to pick up some soup and a pack of socks, but while I'm there I might as well pop over to the video game section and see what's there or if anything good is on sale. Then go spend some time in the movie section. Maybe grab something new to watch this weekend. Then check out the Transformers section and see if there's any new figures I don't have. Fun!
Now it's go there to pick up socks and some soup, and then leave. Woo.
At least the toy section is still there, but distrubution has sucked so much since Covid that it might as well not be there.
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they should bring back Blockbuster, but you cant rent anything
you simple pay $3, go in, wander around looking at all the movies and games, picking up the boxes and reading the backs, watching some trailers and cringe Blockbuster ads on the hanging CRT, smell the weird microwave popcorn smells coming from the POPZ kettle corn buckets, and then leave
Funny how places are killing physical storefronts at the same time that digital storefronts have increasingly become horrible messes. So many of the 'big box' online places have made it impossible to search, get accurate product info, etc.
Word. I buy and read lots of physical books, and they never break or become obsolete. They just work, entirely standalone. It's a beautiful thing when all other media require players to function.I've found I read less with Kindles, and that I'm more likely to read if it's a physical book. Arguably better to buy a physical book that's recyclable and can be passed down than some device that's going to be e-waste in West Africa in 3-5 years like my last two Kindles.
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They already do this at various county fairs and conventions, so The Blockbuster Experience actually exists.
I can tell when people don't like the enjoyment of window-shopping though.
The problem I have with online shopping is it focuses much more on you already knowing what you're looking for, searching for that specific item and then buying it. It does not cater well to browsing and discovery let alone when you're not exactly sure what you're looking for. Often times when I'm gift shopping, shopping online just doesn't do it for me and I'll head to the mall where I can just browse and get ideas that I wouldn't have found otherwise. Physical stores show me choices and options and making discovery much easier than an online store.
I really hate to only have Amazon and a select few small independent stores as my only options to buy physical media. :/
At this point I'm getting legit curious what the eventual digital media apocalypse is going to look like.
(When people become unable to access much of what used to exist.)
(When people become unable to access much of what used to exist.)
haha. there'll be a weird time in the future where a 70s period piece movie is indistinguishable from a contemporary movie.
Yeah I think the discovery is a big part of it, when you find something you didn't know you were looking for, or that even exists. Also makes for conversation when out and about. I enjoy my visuals, and honestly, it beats skimming through marked up drop-ship items too.
Not surprised to hear about this at the retail stores, but losing them as an online option would be a damn shame. They're the ones that got me my Cameron 4K discs 🤣
Gonna be difficult to actually own stuff in the future. Everything is just going to be leased to you though subscriptions models.
Boutique home media companies are thriving and keep popping up more and more, so they'll still be around on their own storefronts.
It's actually kind of hilarious. You can get a bunch of old Italian horror movies in 4K through boutique companies, but you're desperately hoping that movies up for Oscars get any kind of physical release.
Ya, I completely agree. To make things worse, I just got back from Japan and shopping at stores there is like heaven by comparison to how stores are now here. I mean it was always better even a couple decades now, but it feels like the options shown to you compared to here has widen the gap because we're losing so many stores that focus on specific categories. Heck, it's amazing that the Tower Records in Shibuya is still there and it's just 7 floors of stuff to look through. I can't remember the last time I even saw or stepped foot into a music store around here now that most of them are gone in the Bay Area.
And most people are perfectly fine with not owning anything.
OP
OP
I understand the convivence angle, but I truly can't fathom why everyone is simply okay with giving up ownership. I really can't. I know people are gonna try to reply to this and tell me all of the understandable and obvious explanations as to why this is the case, but the idea of just being ok with subscription services that are constantly rising in price is beyond me.
I love watching videos in Japan with the floors and floors of just stuff to look at, almost like mini museums of visual-overload. I've never been though.
I do wonder if brick and motor will come back in a sense of companies popping up and wanting growth in terms of constant expansion, to appropriately place specialty stores around. I feel like Texas and the midwest is spoiled by an abundance of these places, that I alwsys see on videos. And Fry's are all gone, but now Micro Center is coming back to Santa Clara! A bunch of my friends, who sure, buy stuff online, are excited for it!
The bigger thing here with "physical movies etc are dying" is also the bigger talk of "physical stores are dying to internet shopping" and that's not entirely true either. I feel like both still has a place in the US, but more of a strategy is needed for it, but something that can survive.
I've always wondered what the correlation is with this and home ownership. If there was no lack of space with renting something probably smaller, would this open some people up to purchasing some things they enjoy?
If Target stops selling physical media then how is Taylor Swift going to sell exclusive versions of her albums?
That may already be happening. I know of at least 4 mom n' pop game stores within a 30 mile radius and I don't live in or near a big city. One just opened up a new store in my fairly small hometown. These stores focus on retro video games of course along with MtG, Warhammer, etc but before too long all physical video games will be "retro".
This is honestly no real loss. Target is not competitive in the physical media space. My location has UHDs and Blu-rays in the entryway. I look every time and walk right past because I'm not paying $25 for a disc.
Seems a lot of people here are burying the lede in the rumor saying Target won't even sell physical media online. Doesn't matter if you don't think people don't go into a store to buy stuff anymore, but no online shopping is a vote of no-confidence against the sustainability of physical media for sure.
It is a real loss because they often do a B2G1 sale multiple times a year on movies and TV shows which gets them to a pretty good price. Plus add on an extra 5% off with the Red Card and the fact that you don't actually need to buy three items to get 33% off and they apply to preorders, that means we're losing out if the rumor is true they plan to exist. It's a big loss IMO, especially after Best Buy left.
...yes?
The idea that Kindle would be the iPod of books and quickly become the preferred method of reading for almost everybody but a few analog purists never panned out. eBooks' share of the overall book market has basically plateaued for many years now.
Really bums me out. And I've got decades left of this. An all digital world sounds boring.
First Best Buy and now potentially Target. I guess I'm just going to have to keep hitting up secondhand stores to get my blu-rays.
Gotta be real, if they replaced the physical games with LEGO, that *would* soften the blow for me.
I can see that being the case for the more devoted. I'm only at Target to pick up deo or TP with the kids in tow. I'd love to grab the occasional movie on a whim but it's usually $5-10 more than other sources so why bother.
Options are good. The less options out there means other sources can raise their prices when there's no competition to keep them in check. So those other sources will likely go up in price now that Best Buy and Target are gone. Amazon will likely stop having their B2G1 sales that they do to match Target's.
I love having physical media (mostly games), but I also like being able to pick up lots of it at discount from different retailers. Black Friday pricing won't be the same when no one sells physical copies of games, and I doubt these chains will feel the need to compete with each other, like shaving $5 off the standard Ubisoft 3-week discount just to scoop up more purchases
Somewhat related, but for anyone else, is this a large part of the reason why Black Friday sales became uninteresting? Without the physical movie and game anchor - the TV, SSD, whatever sales just haven't been able to carry it for me, and has left us with "Amazon's garage sale."
A shame, but not surprising. Our local Target has more bookshelves than they do movies or music-related releases. Which is nice I guess, but I'd rather to go B&N.
I prefer physical media. I'm really sick of trying to hunt shit down on streaming. I don't want more than one service.
I prefer physical media. I'm really sick of trying to hunt shit down on streaming. I don't want more than one service.
I have a kindle but only use it for books that are text only. For stuff like graphical novels or anything with a lot of pictures I'll go physical.
Hey, those folks have a ton of options already. I personally don't want to be stuck renting my favorite shows from increasingly expensive streaming platforms.
There's a fairly chance this ends up being true, but there's a next-to-zero chance this source is actually legitimate. That said,
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Physical books rebounded a lot after COVID and IIRC they are back a lot of the market share they'd lost to digital. Other than saving space, there's essentially no benefit to ebooks when you typically only need access to one, maybe two books for days or even weeks at a time, there's not much of a cost benefit, and books are pleasing collectables like vinyl. Personally, I also significantly prefer the tactile experience of reading a physical book - the ebook experience feels far inferior to me, in a way that's far more tangible than the differences between digital and physical versions of most other media.
Movie sales and non-Switch software are sub-margin-of-error-tier in terms of the percentage of total sales. They'll be fine.
Not a glitch, the terms of the deal explicitly lay out how the deal functions in that way if you return or cancel items.
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Part of me wishes everything was just print-on-demand.
If I want a Blu-Ray of fucking Apple Dumpling Gang for some reason I should be able to get Disney to slap a blank disc in a burner and send me a copy.
If I want a Blu-Ray of fucking Apple Dumpling Gang for some reason I should be able to get Disney to slap a blank disc in a burner and send me a copy.
For me, I had some of my games and a console stolen years ago, and when I replaced the console, I got all of my digital stuff back and (obviously) none of the physical stuff.
Life's too short for me to care about "owning" something. Can't take it with me and all that. I still have three rows of DVDs but I only occasionally pull one out to watch.
Target is the nearest retailer that stocks physical games for me, so this sucks. But also, the Target games section never had anyone at the desk. You'd have to buzz for them, hope they have the right key, and show them where the game you want is. It was like pulling teeth.
Specialty stores will make a comeback. They already exist and are selling newer titles; that's as far as it's probably going to go. Big box stores won't be the one stop shops anymore, but other, probably local places will pick up the slack.
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