It's no secret that physical formats are rapidly becoming a thing of the past, and even for Switch 2, it's no longer a given now that most games are being released on so-called Game Key Cards, which only serve as keys for downloading. This means that the cartridge that comes with the game does not contain the game itself, which is unfortunately something that also applies to discs for other formats.
Via Bluesky, Circana analyst Mat Piscatella provides a summary of US game sales in 2025, including hardware, which reveals two interesting details. The first relates to physical game sales, namely that 49% of all PlayStation 5 consoles sold during the year did not have disc drives, and if we look at the Xbox Series S/X, the figure is as high as 66%. This means that we can expect that more than half of all consoles sold did not have disc drives. So expect physical games to decline even further in the future.
The second detail is that 13% of PlayStation 5 purchases were PlayStation 5 Pro, a console that received some criticism when it was released due to its high price tag. In 2024, Piscatella revealed how the PlayStation 4 Pro had fared... which had been purchased by 13% of PlayStation 4 buyers. In short, this seems to be the market level for more expensive premium consoles for Sony.
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