A prominent games industry analyst has shed some light on how comparatively few physical PlayStation games are sold in the US these days.
Circana senior director and video game industry advisor Mat Piscatella was responding to a news story about a Wolverine trailer being flooded with comments protesting Sony‘s decision to stop releasing new games on disc from January 2028.
Posting on Bluesky, Piscatella noted that while players should be making their displeasure heard, the reality is that physical PlayStation games don’t sell anywhere near the same numbers as they used to in the United States.
“Two PlayStation video games sold more than 10,000 physical units in the US during the week ending July 11, 2026,” Piscatella stated. “Seven have sold more than 100,000 physical units year-to-date.”
He added: “Commenting is cool, use your voice and all that. But commenting is cheap, I don’t know.”
Piscatella later clarified that the figures didn’t only refer to first-party PlayStation games, but “total PlayStation. All games, all publishers, all PlayStation platforms”.
It has now been three weeks since Sony announced that physical disc games will be discontinued for PlayStation consoles from January 2028, and it continues to receive backlash across a range of channels.
New videos posted on the official PlayStation YouTube channel (including trailers for indie games that weren’t getting physical releases anyway) continue to get numerous comments about discs, and get more dislikes than likes regardless of the content.
Piscatella replied to another user that, in his opinion, backlash to Sony dropping discs is one thing, but the price of the PlayStation 6 could end up being the ultimate deciding factor in how well the console sells, rather than whether it can play physical games.
“When the mass market sees the PS6 at potentially $1,000+, physical games being a thing or not won’t even make it to the decision making process,” he suggested.
