{"id":129271,"date":"2022-10-27T15:55:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-27T15:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/#article-140018"},"modified":"2022-10-27T15:55:00","modified_gmt":"2022-10-27T15:55:00","slug":"ea-says-it-isnt-ending-physical-sales-in-certain-countries-following-inaccurate-reports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2022\/10\/27\/ea-says-it-isnt-ending-physical-sales-in-certain-countries-following-inaccurate-reports\/","title":{"rendered":"EA Says It Isn’t Ending Physical Sales In Certain Countries, Following “Inaccurate” Reports"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Earlier this afternoon, a report surfaced<\/a> online suggesting that EA GmbH was planning to cease physical distribution of its games across Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Scandinavia due to the market’s increasing shift to digital downloads and the subsequent impact on sales development. However, a short time later, a spokesperson from EA stated that this information was incorrect and that physical copies will still be available to purchase in all areas.<\/p>\n

The original story, shared by video game industry analyst @MauroNL3<\/a> on Twitter, suggested that the company was to undergo an ‘economic restructure’ in which it would move away from the production of physical copies of its games such as FIFA<\/a> and Battlefield<\/a> and focus solely on the development of digital resources.<\/p>\n

In a series of tweets, Mauro cites a story in GamesWirtschaft<\/a>, a German industry magazine, which suggested that the company had announced the restructuring in its latest annual report. According to the source, EA’s Cologne branch had seen its main task reworded from “Import, export, distribution, sale and manufacture of products of any kind related to videos, video games, computer software,” to “Provision of services related to videos, video games, computer software and interactive entertainment.”<\/p>\n

Although the change in wording is slight, the substitution of ‘products’ with ‘services’ was enough to cause the speculation that EA would be moving away from physical publishing.<\/p>\n