Only 7 PS5 Games Have Sold 100K Physical Copies in the US This Year

The Numbers Are Stark

If you have been following the ongoing debate over Sony’s decision to end physical disc production, new data from Circana puts a hard floor under the argument. According to Circana director Mat Piscatella, only seven PS5 games have sold more than 100,000 physical copies in the United States so far in 2026. In the week ending July 11, 2026, just two PS5 titles managed to crack 10,000 physical units sold during that seven-day window. Piscatella shared the figures on Bluesky on July 20.

Those are not typos. Seven games crossing the 100,000 mark for the entire year. Two games clearing 10,000 copies in a week. For context, a single moderately successful release could once routinely do those numbers on launch day alone.

Piscatella did not name which titles made the year-to-date list, but Push Square notes that the candidates likely include some of 2026’s biggest releases. Resident Evil Requiem, Crimson Desert, and 007 First Light are among the games mentioned as probable entries.

Why This Matters Right Now

The timing of this data is not incidental. Sony announced earlier this month that it plans to halt PlayStation disc production starting January 2028, citing what it described as consumer preference for digital media significantly outpacing physical. The announcement triggered a loud and sustained backlash across social media, with PlayStation’s official accounts getting flooded with criticism. The fallout has spread far enough that indie developers have reportedly been caught in the crossfire.

Sony has not walked back the decision. The company returned to social media after going quiet for nearly a week, but gave no indication it was reconsidering. Today’s Circana figures go some way toward explaining why.

As reported by Push Square, the broader sales picture shows digital and physical have drifted as far as an 85% split in favor of the PS Store and competing digital storefronts. That is not a recent trend. It has been building for years, and the pandemic-era acceleration toward digital never really reversed.

A Loud Minority and a Real Tradeoff

The reaction online has been visceral, and the people most upset about losing physical media are genuinely passionate about what they stand to lose. Owning a disc means owning something you can resell, lend, or hold onto when a digital storefront disappears or a license expires. For collectors, for people in areas with slower internet, and for anyone who has ever seen a digital library vanish overnight, the concern is legitimate.

But the sales data suggests those people are not representative of how most PS5 owners actually buy games. Seven titles crossing 100,000 physical copies in roughly six and a half months is an extremely thin tail for a platform with tens of millions of installed units. The math is not kind.

Sony’s stated reasoning, that it is responding to how the majority of its community prefers to access games, now has Circana data sitting behind it rather than just corporate talking points. Whether that makes the decision easier to accept is another matter entirely. The fans who genuinely love physical media are not wrong to mourn something they valued. They are just, apparently, a fairly small share of the buying public.

GameStop’s CEO, for one, has said the disc decision is “totally, totally irrelevant” to the company, which has already pivoted hard toward collectibles and trading cards. That may be the clearest signal yet about where the retail side of this has already landed.