Only seven PlayStation games have sold more than 100,000 physical copies in the US through the first seven months of 2026, per Circana data shared by industry analyst Mat Piscatella. That bleak number helps explain why Sony is pulling the plug on discs entirely.
Sony announced last month that it will end physical game disc production starting January 2028, citing consumer preference for digital downloads. The backlash was immediate: petitions, class-action lawsuits, and thousands of comments flooding PlayStation's social channels demanding a reversal. But the data makes Sony's case brutally clear.
Piscatella shared on Bluesky that just two PlayStation games moved more than 10,000 physical units during the week ending July 11. Year-to-date, the tally of games crossing 100K physical copies sits at seven, across the entire US market.
US consumer spending on physical games has collapsed from $11.5 billion in 2009 to $1.6 billion in 2026, according to a Piscatella chart posted in June. Sony sold roughly 70 million physical PlayStation games globally in 2025, per Niko Partners director Daniel Ahmad, but those numbers keep shrinking.
The hardware situation reinforces the trend. More than half of all Xbox Series consoles in the US lack a disc drive, and over a quarter of PS5s are the digital-only variant.
"We likely have less than a decade left of physical software," Piscatella noted.
Even the best-case estimates suggest no single game will crack 1 million physical sales in the US this year. Global hits like Resident Evil Requiem (7 million total copies) and Crimson Desert (6 million) likely saw single-digit percentages come from discs in the US market.
"Commenting is cool, use your voice and all that," Piscatella wrote. "But commenting is cheap."
Piscatella's blunt assessment: reversing Sony's decision would require something far bigger than online outrage, a real boycott movement and mass cancellations of PS Plus subscriptions. With Sony already retooling its disc printing factories for other purposes, the window for changing course is closing fast.
The market already voted. Seven games sold 100K discs. The rest bought digital.
