Sony count bundled games, even if they are a digital code, as a physical sale.

You basically couldn’t buy a PS5 that wasn’t bundled with one of these games for years.

Exactly! And maintaining the plant to make physical discs costs money. Sony can reduce costs by forcing everyone to digital copies. Customers will ultimately go along with it, because they understand their personal preferences are not worth as much as an extra $0.50 per game in profit.

Won't anyone think of the shareholders?

It's a subscription machine now. You have to pay money for it to function, and 98% of games are unplayable without the subscription. They're getting it to 100%. The idea that you could buy a machine, put a game in, play that game WITHOUT an internet connection and subscription, that's dead.

This data is of course a few years old, trends have probably shifted more towards digital during Covid. But Playstation is still quoting misleading digital sales %, as a lot of small titles and DLCs are only sold digitally, skewing the numbers.

Physical discs disappearing will hurt all players, even digital-only buyers, as Sony will have no competition from the physical market, and can set prices as high as they think they can get away with.

I'm sure Sony has made the calculation and found they come out ahead by removing the overhead of manufacturing discs and drives, eliminating borrowing/used game sales (of which they get no cut), and preparing people for a completely disc-less PS6. Sucks for users' ability to play games in the future, but companies don't tend to care about that and in fact see that as a positive since they have more control over what you have access to.

Most people play once and sell the game on. That's a lot of lost sales for Sony's first party story driven games. They know exactly what they're doing. If people don't boycott Sony then it'll only get worse.

From Mat PIscatella of Circana (tracking US sales data, Piscatella specializes in video games) on Bluesky:

Through May 2026, over 25% of PS5 hardware units sold in the US life-to-date are digital systems.

The life-to-date US attach rate of the add-on Disc Drive to those digital systems is over 5%.

Old data points keep getting thrown around, unfortunately.

Is what it is. Both the pro disc and pro digital camps on this are using whatever numbers best fit the arguments, as one would expect.

Can you take the financial reporting 85%ish digital split as the true split for games with both physical and digital editions? No.

But are the splits better reflected from 5 year old numbers obtained from a leak? Also, no.

Anyways, the numbers aren't even the point at the moment, are they.

I almost always buy physical first party games, regardless of platform. Having Zelda, God of War, Forza etc. on the shelf is just part of the identity and DNA of the system. I love each platform not because of the hardware, but the games behind the company. If it's multiplatform/multiplayer focused, I tend to go digital/PC. Give me physical if your going to be a walled garden ecosystem for your platform!

I started buying old consoles and games a few years ago. Some for my kids, some for me, some to see what would appreciate. I set up a little desktop that has every emulator I could get my hands on. Most new games don't appeal to me and there are so many old ones that I never played that were great.

I am set and PS/Xbox will never see another dime from me. Nintendo... Maybe.

The only time I wanted a digital copy of a ps5 game was when I had a ps5 at home and one at work and got tried of forgetting a disc at one place or another.

On the retro consoles that I play, I can fit the entire library onto an SD card and put it in a flash cart or ODE. And yet I still buy physical games and put them on my shelf.

People want to have a physical game collection. It’s tactile and it helps with choosing what to play when you can see all the boxes. It also feels more permanent, and for a lot of media types, it is more permanent than the NAND flash in SD cards.