PlayStation’s Alarming Lack Of Physical Sales Outlined By Analyst — Gaming

Only Seven PlayStation Games Have Sold More Than 100,000 Physical Copies This Year

DualSense surrounded by PS2 controllers.

Since 2020, Sam has written over 2,500 articles and specializes in telling the stories of the people behind the games. He’s interviewed the biggest game directors, some of the industry’s top talents, told the stories of how indie games came to be, and spoken to players about what really makes them tick. He’s also interviewed some of the world’s biggest musical artists to find out how the medium has inspired their work, and TV and Film actors about their roles in video game adaptations. He even hosted a PAX panel in 2021 and made a documentary in 2024 surrounding the creation of a Disney game.

Alongside this, Sam focuses on breaking news. He got the scoop on Perfect Dark’s cancellation, got context around some AI drama, and revealed how Lady Dimitrescu’s actress would love to step back into the character’s giant shoes. These articles have been picked up by the biggest gaming sites, including IGN, GameSpot, and PC Gamer. He also loves to dive into the numbers behind the games.

Sam’s journey in games journalism has taken him all over the world. He’s covered Gamescom in Germany, Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles, and Tokyo Game Show in Japan, each on more than one occasion.

He’s been learning Japanese since 2024 with the intention of identifying and translating Japanese-language news and bringing it to English-language audiences first, something he’s done countless times.

Sam’s first review was 2020’s Battletoads reboot, and he’s since reviewed games in The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, and Pokemon franchises.

PlayStation's decision to end the physical production of discs in 2028 was an unpopular one. Since its announcement on July 1, long-time PlayStation fans and former Sony bosses have expressed their deep unhappiness with the move. This has led to thousands upon thousands of social media comments, protests, petitions, new bill proposals, and class-action lawsuits. Sony has yet to say anything more, sweeping it under the rug and further deepening the rift with its audience.

The main reason for the decision was pretty evident: money. However, this has now been backed up by some eye-opening figures, with an industry analyst revealing only seven games have sold more than 100,000 physical units on PlayStation in the US this year.

PlayStation's Struggling Physical Sales Likely A Key Factor In Ceasing Disc Production

Over the last few years, there has been a huge shift to digital games. While this raises questions about digital ownership and price monopolies, audiences have spoken, and the ease with which they can download digital titles seems to outweigh anything else.

Numbers had been bandied about, suggesting that as much as 85% of PlayStation's software sales were digital; however, this figure proved misleading, given the number of digital-only games on the PlayStation Store.

Although those numbers were a little misleading, the extent of Sony's declining physical PlayStation sales has been outlined, with industry analyst Mat Piscatella revealing players are moving to digital.

"2 PlayStation video games sold more than 10k physical units in the US during week ending July 11, 2026," he said on Bluesky using Circana data in response to a Kotaku article about PlayStation fan protests hitting the new Wolverine trailer. "7 have sold more than 100k physical units year-to-date." Piscatella's statement covers all games, all publications, and all PlayStation platforms.

It's a damning indictment of the state of physical media in video games.

Talking with your wallets and purchasing physical games may be the only way to go, but even that may be too late. Piscatella followed up his post by saying, "Commenting is cool, use your voice and all that. But commenting is cheap, idk," and it all feels like this digital future is now unstoppable.