PlayStation has confirmed that, starting in 2028, it will no longer release physical copies of its games. There's a long list of reasons why PlayStation is taking this unpopular plunge, but the one board members most likely cite is the potential profits in an all-digital future.
Only one in five PlayStation games sold are physical copies
One of the biggest reasons why PlayStation skips physical releases is that most of its player base buys their games digitally. PlayStation clearly wants 100 percent of its player base to buy digital copies rather than physical copies. That's because every time you choose digital over physical, PlayStation doubles the profit on that sale.
We can get this from PlayStation's FY2025 results, shared by Derek Strickland of TweakTown. The chart shows that, through FY2025, Sony has shipped 70 million physical games. By comparison, it shipped 248 million copies of digital games during the same 12-month period.
It just goes to show why PlayStation is willing to leave physical game production behind entirely, as less than one in every five games it sells is physical. However, it's the dollar amount paired with those annual sales numbers that paint the full picture of why PlayStation's all-digital future is only 18 months away.
PlayStation's profit per game doubles when you buy digitally
PlayStation generated nearly $1 billion from the 70 million physical games it shipped. A seven-digit sum. Not too shabby, and isolated, you might wonder why it's so ready and willing to leave that profit behind. However, it earned seven times that with 248 million digital games shipped during the same period.
Well, of course it made a lot of money from digital games during those years. It sold a lot more of them, and they were naturally made at a much lower cost. It really shows why it's all happening that it actually costs so little. Based on those figures, PlayStation earns about $14 each time a physical copy of one of its games is purchased. If they bought a digital copy of that game instead, that would double to $28.
That doesn't mean that by forcing people to buy digital instead of physical, starting in 2028, PlayStation will be leaving $1 billion on the table every year. It also doesn't mean it will make an extra $1 billion as all those lost physical sales magically convert to digital. It will happen somewhere in between, though, and it's made doubly so by every game sold when that game is guaranteed to be digital rather than physical, making it even more clear why PlayStation is so keen to speed up the process.
- brand
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Sony
- Original release date
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November 12, 2020
- Original MSRP (USD)
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$499, €499, £449, ¥49,980 (base) // $399, €399, £359, ¥39,980 (digital),
- operating system
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Orbis OS
- processor
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Custom 8-core AMD Zen 2
- resolve
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720p – 8K
