In January of 2028, Sony will end production of physical discs for PlayStation systems. Though the choice hasn’t been popular, the corporation has stuck to its guns.
Nonetheless, figures for Marvel’s Wolverine suggest a substantial amount of the audience for that game picked it up physically, making the decision seem even more retrograde.
Numbers from Ampere Analysis (courtesy of The Game Business) for the month of September have Wolverine at second for overall sales on PS5. That’s not surprising, since it’s one of the biggest first-party releases of the year, and a highly-anticipated one at.
But what’s interesting is that, of the 2.16 million copies that were sold, some 35% were boxed. That’s a lot of physical copies of a game, in a market that’s become increasingly digital. It’s closer to half than I would’ve initially guessed.
Wolverine isn’t the only one touting such sales either. Onimusha: Way of the Sword and The Blood of Dawnwalker are both around the same, 30% and 36% physical, respectively, for the same month. Silent Hill: Townfall sold 45% in physical copies on PS5.
Clearly, people are still buying discs, and in considerable numbers. “People have a need to collect. That’s where physical sales are still incredibly relevant for the consumer market,” as Joost van Druenen, analyst and NYU adjunct lecturer on the games industry, tells The Game Business.
“The industry is ready to move on, but not so fast. This is increasingly a big part of it.”
There’s an argument some of those players are probably emboldened to invest in circular pieces of plastic because of Sony’s choices, but I don’t believe such a surge would stretch to a third of copies sold across multiple big releases.
To me, this suggests the physical market is healthier than you might think.
It’s definitely got more life in it than the 82% figure Sony’s thrown around for how much of its business stems from digital sales. These are all games available digitally, and yet people who wanted to play them made a choice. And that’s despite Wolverine suffering middling reviews.
Lots of us have been left disappointed by Sony pivoting away from disc production, and we drive more sales than the corporation might have you believe off hand. Physical forever.