Sony: Physical Market in Decline

That the physical market for video games is progressively and inevitably giving way to the digital one is certainly not news. Confirming this thesis without much difficulty are Sony's fiscal closings for last year, which were made official in March and released in recent days.

According to documents reported by ResetEra, the Japanese company closed the year with revenues of 31.5 Billion Dollars: of this figure, sales of games on optical media yielded about 3%, while digital sales reached as much as 20%. This is still a remarkable figure of 945 Million [not to be sniffed at...], but it's the first time this data has dropped below the 4% threshold.

To confirm the downward trend, one only needs to consider that until 2020, the year of PS5's launch and thus the Digital model devoid of an integrated optical drive, the percentage had been fixed at 6% for years; with the new console, it immediately dropped to 5%, remaining stable at that level until the March 2024 fiscal closings, when it fell to 4%. Now, just one year later, we are at 3%.

The phenomenon could probably also be linked to the progressive shift of users from PS4 to PS5: if so, it would be further data supporting the thesis that PS5 users generally prefer digital media.

All these considerations support some hypotheses spread by the usual well-informed sources, such as Insider Gaming, according to which Sony is considering a PS6 that is by default without an integrated optical drive, to which a peripheral could eventually be coupled – exactly as happens with PS5 Slim Digital.

We'll see...