Assassin's Creed dev foresees the death of physical games

In a recent blog post from Ubisoft, the company's SVP of strategic partnerships and business development Chris Early laid out predictions for the future of physical games. The company believes that streaming is the future, and that physical sales continue to plummet — but never go away completely.

The interview comes at an interesting time. We've heard updates on Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard for months, but with news of the deal's completion it's been easy to miss Ubisoft's own acquisitions. Now that the merger is complete, Ubisoft has perpetual cloud streaming rights for Call of Duty and all other Activision Blizzard games as well as any games they release for the next 15 years.

The blog goes on to explain what that means for the company's future - it seems Ubisoft+ subscribers will benefit greatly, while a great deal of money can be made from licensing the games to "cloud gaming companies [and] console makers."

On the topic of physical game sales, it should be noted that Chris' views do not necessarily represent the whole company's. Still, as a figure with a lot of sway at the company who was a 'crucial figure' in the negotiations with Activision Blizzard, his quotes provide some food for thought.

What do you think of the future of physical media in games?

There's a collector edition market. There's the aspect of gifting physical items and allowing access for people to be able to easily purchase a game in a store and gift them to their friends or family. Some people will always want to own the physical disk. I just don't think it's going away. Do I think physical sales might get lower over time? Sure, but will it ever completely go away? I don't think so.

Streaming is essentially the same as buying a disk - it's just a way to get those bits to the device you're going to play them on.

The industry does already seem to be trending towards digital downloads — the existence of digital-only PS5s makes that clear — but it's been a controversial topic for gamers that don't have the fastest internet, and for those who believe it's harmful towards preservation efforts. We'll have to wait and see if Chris' predictions hold any water.