PlayStation Physical Game Share Still As High As 32%

Since Sony announced that it would be ending physical media production for the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro, there has been much discussion about the value of physical games media in the modern gaming landscape. Some argue that physical media is invaluable for game preservation and access to content in some remote parts of the world, while others argue that its value is limited, because the physical media market share is small for most games, and it has limited preservation value, thanks to day-one patches. Alinea Analytics recently posted some data about physical media sales on PlayStation, putting more numbers to the impact of physical games media on PlayStation.

Interestingly, despite the relatively high physical sales split of some games, like Resident Evil Requiem, with disc sales accounting for 30.2% of its sales, and Marvel's Wolverine, whose disc sales came to 32.3% of its total sales revenue, the total physical game sales revenue for games released in 2026 on PlayStation 5 and PS4 amounted to $655 million, which is less than 20% of sales revenue for the year. As the analytics firm explains, that revenue split itself is skewed by digital-only releases and pre-order bonuses, which are all digital sales. The data itself seems to tell a story of a split player base: those who buy first-party, single-player, narrative-driven games tend to skew more towards physical media, while sports and multiplayer gamers tend to buy digital more often. Read full story