The furore over Sony's decision to effectively kill physical games on its PlayStation platform appears to have died down (for now), and new data from Alinea Analytics shows how wide the split between physical and digital PS5 games is in 2026. As Alinea's head of market analysis, Rhys Elliott, notes, PlayStation's top new 2026 games by physical copies are mostly single-player AAA titles, with Resident Evil Requiem the best-seller.
Capcom's hit Resident Evil game is estimated to have sold 1.3 million units on PS5, and it's also estimated to be the only game on the list to have broken the 1 million sales milestone. Other games like 007 First Light (873,000) and Marvel's Wolverine have come close (799,000), but overall, digital currently has a 70/30 sales lead.
Top PlayStation games by physical copies sold and revenues
- Resident Evil Requiem -- 1.3 million units sold
- 007 First Light -- 873K units sold
- Marvel's Wolverine -- 799K units sold
- EA Sports FC 27 -- 705K units sold
- Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced -- 613K units sold
- Crimson Desert -- 511K units sold
- Pragmata -- 442K units sold
- Onimusha: Way of the Sword -- 423K units sold
As Elliott explained, PlayStation first-party and Japan-centric games typically shift more physical units, with sales of Capcom games like Pragmata and Onimusha: Way of the Sword almost split evenly between physical and digital this year. Physical sales accounted for 44.0% of Pragmata's copies sold so far and 44.1% of Onimusha's copies sold, thanks to Capcom's home market in Japan.
"Our estimates show that Japan accounts for 12% of Onimusha‘s copies sold on PlayStation, and 11% for Pragmata‘s. While digital shares are on the up in Japan, Japanese consumers still have a penchant for physical copies, more so than any Western market. It’s ingrained in the culture," Elliott wrote. "Our estimates show that Japan accounts for 12% of Onimusha‘s copies sold on PlayStation, and 11% for Pragmata‘s. While digital shares are on the up in Japan, Japanese consumers still have a penchant for physical copies, more so than any Western market. It’s ingrained in the culture."
Other games like Silent Hill: Townfall, Beast of Reincarnation, Yakuza Kiwami 3, and the Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly remake have also seen their sales split down the middle between physical and digital in Japan, but Sony is attempting to subtly persuade that market to go digital. The company recently released a digital-only PS5 exclusively in that region, at the tempting price of $350.
While Japan is something of an outlier when it comes to game medium preference, the rest of the world is a different story. Sports games are some of the best-sellers of any given year, and as Elliott pointed out, five of the top 10 games in 2026's new PlayStation games by revenue were all sports games. Only 8.9% of EA Sports FC 27 games sold this year were physical, while sales of NBA 2K27, Madden 27, College Football 27, and MLB The Show 26 also heavily favored digital sales.
Publishers have slowly nudged their audiences toward digital editions over the years, offering early access and other perks to encourage them. In comparison, the prestige single-player games that Sony became known for, are still popular with physical game collectors. It's easy to see why Sony wants to squeeze as much revenue juice out of its consumers as possible, as it loses out on extra potential cash with each physical sale. It has to hand a portion of sales over to retailers, fork over cash for various distribution costs, and the company probably isn't happy about it can't extract any cash from the second-hand game sales market.
Compare that to digital and third-party sports games, and you can see how Sony takes a 30% cut from a massive number of games sold on its marketplace, in a genre that is nearly all-digital.
"It's doubly ironic, given the whole move is about squeezing more revenue per player, and a lot of the highest revenue users are some of the people Sony's pissing off," Elliott concluded. "But no, PlayStation won't necessarily lose much revenue by switching to digital-only. Some players will walk, but most will move over to digital. The economics are sound. That wasn’t ever the issue (in my view, anyway). The issue’s been with messaging and giving players a proper off-ramp from physical. Sony is usually quiet and doesn’t talk much, which can sometimes be a strength. It hasn’t been a strength here."