Displaying items by tag: Best Buy is exiting the physical media business

[10/13/23 Update: Variety and Media Play News have now confirmed my reporting that Best Buy is phasing out physical media in the new year, following the 2023 holiday shopping season. The company will apparently still continue to sell videogames. A Best Buy spokesperson provided this statement to Variety: “To state the obvious, the way we watch movies and TV shows is much different today than it was decades ago. Making this change gives us more space and opportunity to bring customers new and innovative tech for them to explore, discover and enjoy.” So... there you have it. Longtime readers of The Digital Bits can rest assured of two things: First, no this does not spell the end of physical media. And second, I’ll have a great deal more to say on this topic here at The Bits on Monday and all next week. See you back here then.]

All right, folks... we’ve got a little bit of a whopper for you today. And so as not to bury the lede, let’s get right to it...

The Digital Bits has learned from industry sources—and we’ve confirmed it with multiple sources now—that Best Buy plans to exit the physical media business for good next year, possibly as soon as the end of Q1 2024.

This includes not just their in-store Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K Ultra HD sales, which the retailer has been gradually phasing out for a couple of years now in their many store locations nationwide, but online sales as well. This means no more Best Buy-exclusive Steelbook titles, and no more titles from Best Buy period.

The fact that Best Buy is discontinuing physical media sales in their retail locations should come as no surprise; anyone who’s visited a Best Buy store location on a Tuesday recently will be all too aware that the retailer’s disc sections keep getting moved around and have gotten smaller and smaller. Our own experience here at The Bits is that some store locations don’t even bother to stock new-release titles on the sales floor anymore—even their exclusive ones. More than once, in their Southern California locations, I’ve had to ask for the titles and wait while a clerk checks the storeroom.

But the idea that Best Buy would discontinue online sales too comes as a bit of a surprise... though perhaps it shouldn’t. We’ve noted in recent months that Paramount has quietly shifted their Blu-ray and 4K Steelbook exclusive titles—titles that would normally have been released at Best Buy—to Amazon instead. And it seems very likely that other studios will follow Paramount’s lead in the months ahead. [Read on here...]