Did a little research into this "85% of games bought on Playstation are digital". So I decided to look at the EXACT wording of what that meant. Spoiler: Its not "Out of 100 copies of Spiderman sold, 85% are digital" Here's how they calculate it. Digital Units sold, Divided by Total Units sold, times 100. Straight forward right? In Q4 of 2025, sony sold 74.6 million units in total, that is both Digital and Physical units. But the "85% of all games bought are digital" has a HUGE skew to it. Why? Because there are THOUSANDS of DIGITAL only games that do not get a PHYSICAL release. Think the 5$-20$ indie titles or digital only ports of older games. However, those digital sales are counted AGAINST the physical sales. Meaning? Even if EVERYONE who stopped buying Physical in the past 5 years, went out and bought one game a month? Digital will still dominate physical because (mostly) everything thats physical is also digital, but very little that is digital is also physical. The Comparison is not fair and when its thrown around on social media its literally framed in a way for the stat to prove how dominant Digital sales are while excluding a number of factors. Doing so would be like comparing Your local Wal-Mart's stock to Amazon. Not only that, but there are many digital only sales that are held that puts STEEP discounts on games that in-store simply cannot do. Of course there are some games that are on sale in-store that are not on sale digitally, but those digitally only games ALSO go on sale which the retailer has Zero access to because its digital only. There's also digital incentives where buying the game digitally grants you more content vs buying it in store, driving more sales. Then, there are some games that release digitally, and then have a physical release MONTHS later; or, allow you to play the game a few days early. If you wanted a more fair comparison? It would be "Digital media with a simultaneous Physical Release vs The Physical Release" Having this stat would reveal the true number. But even THAT number is missing details because that also doesn't include people buying the game second hand/Used from GameStop. However, while Im sure that stat would STILL benefit digital sales, I would suggest and conclude that it wouldn't be "85%" as many people are suggesting. Sources: sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR…
