Seven. That is how many PlayStation games have sold more than 100,000 physical copies in the US this year. Circana’s Mat Piscatella posted the figure on July 20, and it lands four months before the biggest launch the industry has attempted in a decade: GTA 6, November 19.
The numbers
Seven PlayStation games have topped 100,000 US physical sales year-to-date; only two topped 10,000 in the week ending July 11. Posted by Circana analyst Mat Piscatella from the Circana Retail Tracking Service.
Source: Mat Piscatella, Bluesky
US consumer spending on physical games fell from $11.5 billion in 2009 to $1.6 billion in 2026. Piscatella’s long-view estimate: “We likely have less than a decade left of physical software.”
Source: GamesRadar
EA Sports FC 26, Resident Evil Requiem and 007 First Light are likely among the seven. Circana has not published the list; these come from global estimates cross-referenced by press.
Source: GamesRadar
Around 85% of PlayStation game sales are now digital. Widely reported, but digital-only titles inflate the percentage — treat it as directional, not precise.
Source: Forbes
GTA 6’s physical box ships with a download code, not a playable disc, and digital preload opens November 12. Rockstar made the disc call before this data landed.
Source: Rockstar Games
Why the outrage does not show up at the till
The context makes the number sharper. Sony says disc production winds down from 2028, and the comment sections have been furious about it — more than 12,000 comments piled under the Marvel’s Wolverine trailer demanding physical releases. Piscatella’s response cuts through: “Commenting is cool, use your voice and all that. But commenting is cheap.”
The till disagrees with the comments. Over a quarter of PS5s in circulation have no disc drive at all. Even Resident Evil Requiem — a series with one of gaming’s most collector-heavy audiences — did under 28% of its 3.5 million copies on disc.
What this means for GTA 6’s launch
Rockstar read this data before you did. The GTA 6 “physical” edition is a box with a download code inside — no playable disc — and preload opens a week before launch on November 12. Viewed against Circana’s numbers, that stops looking like cost-cutting and starts looking like a forecast: Rockstar expects launch demand to be overwhelmingly digital and has built the release around servers, not shipping pallets.
Two knock-on effects worth watching. First, midnight launches move online: if the disc does not contain the game, the queue that matters is the preload, which is why the November 12 date deserves a spot in your calendar alongside the 19th. Second, the retail “sellout” story that usually shapes launch-week coverage will mean less than ever — a sold-out shelf of code-in-box copies says nothing about how many people are actually playing.
The fair counterargument, put best by Forbes’ Paul Tassi: the shift benefits Sony’s margins more than anyone’s convenience. Game prices are not falling as discs disappear, preservation gets harder, and “ownership” of a download is thinner than ownership of a disc. Sony’s own line — that it will keep offering “choices as to where players prefer to purchase” — is hard to hear when the physical choice left on the shelf is a box with a code in it. Both things are true at once: the disc market has collapsed, and the people losing it are right that they are losing something.
The PlayTheory take: GTA 6 will not save the disc, and it was never going to. If seven games clearing 100K discs is the whole year so far, the largest launch in history going code-in-box is not a scandal — it is the industry saying out loud what the sales data has whispered for years. The players who want a real disc have our sympathy. The data says there are not enough of them left to change the maths.
Related: the SEC filing that reaffirmed November 19 · our GTA 6 hub