A new report tied to PlayStation is awful news for those who have been fighting for physical games to continue being released well into the future. At the start of July, PlayStation made the divisive announcement that it would be doing away with physical games for PS5 (and presumably PS6) beginning in January 2028. This move has since been met with backlash from millions around the globe, with some suggesting that they would consider abandoning the PlayStation ecosystem altogether without physical games being available. Now, based on new data that has emerged, it’s perhaps become more apparent than ever why PlayStation is making this decision to begin with.
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According to Mat Piscatella of Circana, which is a company that tracks sales data for video games in the United States, only seven video games on PlayStation platforms have sold more than 100,000 physical units up until this point in 2026. When looking at more recent data, Piscatella also revealed that for the week of July 5th, only two PlayStation games sold more than 10,000 copies physically in this span. These numbers are quite dismal, to say the least, and essentially validate that physical game sales are lower than ever before.
With this in mind, it’s easy to see why PlayStation has opted to forgo releasing physical games as a whole beginning in 2028. Digital sales have started to greatly surpass those of physical games, with those who are still buying their games in a physical capacity being very small in number. The savings that PlayStation could make by ending the production of physical games surely outweighs the revenue that it makes from games being sold in this manner, which is why it’s not looking to go to an all-digital ecosystem.
Even if PlayStation’s own reasoning from a financial perspective makes sense, though, it doesn’t seem like fans who are upset about this decision are going to accept it any time soon. In the time since making this reveal, PlayStation’s social channels have been littered with continued comments from fans demanding that the company reverse course on this move to kill off physical games. Up until this point, PlayStation hasn’t provided a new statement on the matter, as it’s instead just trying to power through and hope that users will come to accept the new status quo.
As Piscatella himself pointed out, if fans who feel burned by this choice from PlayStation want to truly put pressure on the company, then they need to speak with their wallets. PlayStation is almost certainly paying no attention to what fans are saying about this move online, so for any real change to come about, PlayStation would have to see a financial incentive on its end that would convince it to keep manufacturing discs.
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