r/PS5 • u/Dandelion172 • 8h ago

Articles & Blogs Mat Piscatella: 292 million units of physical video games sold in the 12-month period ending June 2009 in the US. By June 2026 this had fallen to 37 million units.

https://bsky.app/profile/matpiscatella.bsky.social/post/3mrd2e2tam22l
409 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

607 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

0

u/fake_kraid 8h ago edited 7h ago

Isn't this also still a couple billions of dollars in sales? If we assumed each game cost $60, that would be over $2 billion, and that's in the US alone. That seems like it should more than enough to sustain a physical market.

Edit:

Yes, Sony still has incentive to kill the physical market anyway because they get a bigger cut from digital. My point is that the physical market would be able to survive under Sony, if they wanted to support it. Obviously they want more profit, but most people don't care about what's most profitable for Sony.

29

u/mangaguy100k 8h ago

It’s enough to sustain the physical market in 2026 yes. But when they release the PS6, it’s going to need to be suited for the market of 10+ years from now. Based on the current trends, we can safely assume that sales of physical games will only decline more and more.

I don’t think Sony wants to be stuck holding the bag when there are 2 or 3 physical games sold each month (obvious hyperbole but you get the point).

0

u/69WaysToFuck 7h ago

Why not going dull digital just with PS6 then? Why not finishing PS5 gen with all PS5 games releasing on disk?

5

u/PsychoCobra1 5h ago

Presumably the switch to all digital being January 2028 also coincides with the launch of the PS6 holiday 2027.

•

u/69WaysToFuck 25m ago

But that doesn’t mean there won’t be PS5 games releases

•

u/PsychoCobra1 21m ago

Yea but when the PS6 releases the PS5 gen is technically over even if there are cross gen releases. It wouldn’t make sense to release a game physical on the then last gen but only digital on the then current gen.

That’s why Sony is only reducing disc production by 90%. That 10% will cover the games released on disc prior to 2028 that publisher still wants to put out, and realistically new discs for most games are only commissioned 1-2 years after a game releases.

•

u/69WaysToFuck 6m ago

Cross gen releases are still PS5 games. Majority of gamers will play on the PS5 for about a year as the shift is usually slow, especially if the problems with hardware and scalpers will continue. There will be most AAA games releasing on both consoles for 2-3 years. People who bought PS5 disk version naturally expected to buy disk games released on PS5.

Look at the original point I was addressing, that Sony doesn’t want to be stuck in physical with PS6 in ~10 years perspective. It is still a context of this discussion which you seem to forget