Circana’s ever-enlightening analyst Mat Piscatella has shared some updated details on digital sales splits in the United States – and they more or less confirm why Sony’s opted to exclude the disc drive from its PS5 Pro console. He reports that from January through August of this year, a whopping 78% of PS5 games were purchased digitally, up 3% year-over-year.
The important detail about Piscatella’s methodology here is that he’s only counting games which have a physical and digital version available; any titles only available digitally are not included. Similarly, if Circana doesn’t receive digital sales data – like in rare instances where publishers don’t disclose it – those games are also excluded.
This gives us a pretty good indicator of the US market overall, then. Piscatella does caution that “this doesn’t represent true demand” as retailers have “been more conservative in its assortments and buys, while publishers have been more aggressive in promoting digital”. We’d argue, though, that if physical copies were flying off the shelves, they’d be plentiful available.
For the sake of comparison, Nintendo Switch through the same period posted a 53% digital split, while Xbox Series X|S tallied an outrageous 91%. It should be noted, again, this only accounts for games sold, so Game Pass downloads don’t contribute to this number. If they did, the digital ratio would be even higher on Xbox.