Despite Sony’s announcement that it will be ending the production of PlayStation discs in January 2028 to align itself with consumer preference for digital distribution, a new report by Rhys Elliott of Alinea Analytics indicates that the company still makes quite a bit of money from the physical releases of its biggest games. In his latest newsletter, Elliott has noted that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has been one of the biggest revenue generators among Sony’s first-party outings, having brought in an estimated $1.2 billion since its release, making up 35 percent of its combined revenue with digital.
The same trend was observed across a number of other Sony first-party releases. Ghost of Yōtei, for instance, sold 5.3 million copies, bringing in gross revenue of $400 million with its physical release. This was 37.6 percent of total sales revenue. Astro Bot brought in $275 million – 46.8 percent of total sales revenue – coming from the physical release. The only title that was noted to have bucked this trend was the co-op game Helldivers 2, the physical release of which seemingly only contributed 8.3 percent to its gross revenue.
Elliott noted that, despite physical releases still being quite popular, the company seems to value revenue from digital sales more. “A disc dollar is worth less to Sony than a digital one, as there’s the retailer cut, manufacturing, and distribution.” The analyst went on to speak about how the decision to end disc production largely comes down to the company’s desire to “control” the market by “killing the secondhand market”.
The numbers also give us an idea about Sony’s priorities when it comes to the types of games it releases. According to Elliott, “Physical revenue is huge in the prestige single-player games Sony is getting more cautious about.” On the other hand, Helldivers 2 has been an undeniable success for the company, which is noted as being “a big part of why Sony keeps gunning for another live-service hit (preferably first-party, not third-party) to give it annual recurring revenue for when a hit-driven prestige period gets rough.”
“Although live-service is pretty much zero-sum when it comes to PvP, so winning players can be difficult. Still, PlayStation wants these revenues. It sees how much third-party publishers rake in through FC, Fortnite, and Roblox, and on those it only takes its store cut. That’s 30%; 100% would be nicer, despite the budgetary price of admission (see: Concord…).”
Interestingly, Elliott also discussed how the rumored PS6 handheld may have played a big role in Sony’s decision to end disc production, since the device is expected to be digital-only, and the company likely decided that “ripping the band-aid off now” was the best move.
“I’ve seen people say PlayStation will lose players over these decisions. It’ll certainly lose some – but it’s playing the long game. It wants to set the bar now, ahead of the PS6, so the backlash doesn’t bleed into that generation – most importantly because of the rumoured handheld component of it all.”
In the meantime, Sony recently announced that it had canceled its deal to publish Kojima Productions’ espionage game, Physint. This announcement even seems to have surprised former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida.
