Physical media still going strong at PlayStation with 70 million game discs sold last year

Sony's recent annual earnings report shows that physical media is still going strong at PlayStation, although the numbers are indeed decreasing year over year.

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Sony's FY25 results highlight the games industry's long-running trend of digital-first earnings. Sony's games division earns most of its money from digital thanks to the potent combination of microtransactions and full game sales. Despite digital's dominance, the group is still shipping tens of millions of game discs every year.

Last year, Sony recorded that there were 69.9 million PlayStation game discs shipped throughout FY25. That's a reduction of 2.9 million from FY24 (down nearly -4%), but still representative of strong demand for physical media.

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Throughout the entire year, Sony sold a total of 317.9 million games on the PS4 and PS5, including both game discs and games sold on the PlayStation Store.

Physical represented just 22% of this total, or 69.9 million units, whereas digital made up 78%, or a staggering 248 million units.

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The skew also brings to mind one of digital's biggest advantages: direct access to the consumer, which allows for easier execution of strategically-planned discounts.

A big reason that Sony is able to sell so many digital copies is because these games often go on sale with major discounts, with many of the best-selling games priced anywhere from $5-15. While the holiday period makes up the bulk of the sales period, a lot of these promotions are seasonal and held multiple times throughout the year.

This effect is amplified for annualized sports games like EA's and 2K's lineup, which typically go on sale for drastically discounted prices and will sit on the PlayStation Store's best-sellers lists for as long as they're on sale.

Retailers, on the other hand, have to manage their own sales in specific ways and aren't always as quick to make such heavy discounts on a direct and cyclical basis.

In any case, we shouldn't worry about Sony phasing out PlayStation game discs any time soon, not when there are still nearly 70 million physical games being shipped over a year's time.

Sony is currently investing into its next-gen PlayStation 6 console, which could be all-digital by default but may also feature an optional disc drive similar to the current PS5 lineup.

PlayStation is also doing so well right now that Sony expects the games division to deliver record operating profit even as it starts to invest more heavily into the PS6 ecosystem.