Physical disc-based copies of Resident Evil: Requiem on PlayStation consoles may have been more popular than all versions of the game on Xbox, a new report has found, while unearthing a trove of other statistics about physical sales.
The information comes from Alinea Analytics analyst Rhys Elliot,, who published a newsletter breaking down the top PlayStation games by physical copies sold. According to Elliot’s estimates, Resident Evil: Requiem sold 1.3 million physical copies, which makes up 15 percent of the game’s total revenue, and 30.2 percent of its revenue on PlayStation. Physical copies made 1.8x more revenue on PlayStation than it made from all copies sold – digital and physical – on Xbox, the newsletter reports.
Meanwhile, physical sales of 007 First Light, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, and Crimson Desert are all under 30 percent of their relevant totals, according to this report. This makes physical sales a minority, but if the figures are accurate, proves that they still account for a hearty chunk of the total revenue for these single-player games. Wolverine, another example used by Rhys, seems to owe 800,000 of its 2.6m sales to physical copies, as well as nearly a third of its total revenue.
In Japan, there’s even stronger support for physical game sales. First-party PlayStation and Japan-centric games such as Capcom releases tend to sell more physical copies there. have a larger slice of its total sales be physical than other types of games.
Elliot surmises that’s because physical games are more “ingrained in the culture” there. 44 percent of Pragmata’s copies sold were physical, for example, and 44.1 percent of Onimusha: Way of the Sword’s sales were physical too. With Japan responsible for 12 percent of Onimusha’s sales and 11 percent of Pragmata’s, the nation’s buying habits are enough to make a substantial impact on global statistics.
It’s against that backdrop that the new, digital-only and Japan-exclusive PS5 Black has launched in Japan, for $350, with a separate disc drive sold for $75. Elliot interprets this as an attempt to “nudge” Japanese users towards buying games digitally.
However, whereas physical sales for single-player games seem healthy, it’s a different situation for sports games. PlayStation’s current top-selling game – FC 27 – owes only 8.9 percent of its sales to physical. Still, as is noted by Elliot, the relative popularity of physical games on PlayStation is likely a key component of the backlash Sony has faced with its decision to shift towards digital.
Only Monday, PlayStation founder Ken Kutaragi said that discs became a “metaphor for ‘owning’ games”, and that the upset at their discontinuation was probably a “mentality issue”. Sony has also pledged to continue its plans to move away from discs despite the associated outrage.