The Retail Shift: "Software Doesn't Matter Anymore"
While passionate gamers are clawing to keep physical media alive by flooding Sony's comment sections, the executive suite of the world's largest brick-and-mortar game retailer is singing a completely different tune.
In a series of candid television interviews, GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen addressed Sony’s bombshell roadmap to phase out physical PS5 game discs starting in 2028. Surprisingly, Cohen revealed that the death of physical discs poses zero threat to GameStop's survival—because the retailer has already quietly abandoned its reliance on them.
"It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all," Cohen stated bluntly. "Software, it mattered in the past. Software today makes up less than 12% of the business, and collectibles make up over half the business. So it's totally, totally irrelevant."
┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│ GameStop's New Revenue Engine │
└──────────────────┬──────────────────┘
│
┌───────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────┐
▼ ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────┐ ┌─────────────────────────────────┐
│ The Shrinking Past │ │ The Lucrative Future │
│ • Hardware & Software Sales: │ │ • Figures, Merchandise, and │
│ Now make up just a fraction │ Trading Cards: │
│ of the store's priority. │ │ • Dominates over 50% of retail │
│ • Digital stores captured the │ shelf space and revenue. │
│ vast majority of game sales. │ │ • Higher margins than software. │
└─────────────────────────────────┘ └─────────────────────────────────┘
The math backs up Cohen's lack of concern. Gone are the days when GameStop's bottom line lived and died by used game trade-ins and midnight launch crowds. The company's massive pivot toward pop culture figures, apparel, and high-end trading cards has turned these high-margin collectibles into their primary fiscal life support, leaving low-margin software discs in the rear-view mirror.
The $56 Billion E-Commerce Gambit: Targeting eBay for a Retail Revolution
Instead of dwelling on the decline of game discs, Cohen is aiming his sights on a massive, highly aggressive expansion. Cohen has doubled down on his highly publicized, unsolicited $56 billion offer to acquire e-commerce giant eBay.
While eBay’s board of directors quickly rejected the initial bid—calling it "neither credible nor attractive" due to funding and governance concerns—Cohen has publicly refused to back down, stating to Bloomberg TV that he is "coming for eBay one way or another."
His vision for a combined GameStop-eBay powerhouse relies on transforming the two entities into a modernized behemoth capable of directly challenging Amazon. Cohen plans to leverage GameStop’s 1,600+ physical storefronts as local, same-day hubs for "live commerce" and authenticating high-value collectibles (like rare trading cards). By combining GameStop’s physical footprint with eBay's massive global traffic, Cohen believes they can unlock a dominant slice of the $2.5 trillion second-hand marketplace.
For the players mourning the end of the physical disc era, GameStop's apathy is a harsh dose of reality: the stores they used to buy their game cases from have already moved on to greener pastures.
sulaa Games Tech Editorial: GameStop’s Transition is Smart Business, but a Brutal Betrayal of Gamer Culture
From our tracking desk here at sulaa Games, Ryan Cohen’s comments are the final nail in the coffin of console nostalgia. Hearing the head of GameStop declare video game software "totally irrelevant" is a surreal, frankly tragic milestone.
From a purely cold, hard financial standpoint, Cohen isn't wrong. Software margins on new games are notoriously razor-thin for retailers, and as the industry shifted to digital downloads, brick-and-mortar storefronts were left starving. Transitioning GameStop into a glorified Funkoverse and trading card hub was the only way to keep the lights on and pull the company back from the brink of bankruptcy.
But the psychological blow to gaming culture cannot be understated. GameStop built its entire multi-billion-dollar empire on the backs of local gaming communities—kids trading in their old games to afford a new one, and the tactile joy of holding a physical box. To see that same company eagerly dismiss the death of the disc so they can chase a highly speculative, debt-heavy $56 billion hostile takeover of eBay feels like a complete abandonment of their roots.
Cohen’s dream of using local stores as "same-day authentication hubs" for trading cards might look brilliant on a pitch deck to Wall Street, but it does nothing for the preservation of video games. If the very retailer named after "stopping the game" no longer cares about the game itself, the era of physical gaming hasn't just been abandoned by console manufacturers—it has been left behind by the very people who promised to protect it.
Tags: GameStop Ryan Cohen eBay, GameStop physical games irrelevant, Sony digital-only 2028, Ryan Cohen eBay $56 billion bid, GameStop collectibles revenue, video game physical media death.
