Sony’s decision to ditch discs was practically inevitable, data shows

数据显示：索尼放弃实体光盘几乎是必然之举

Many gamers have been lamenting Sony’s recently announced decision to halt sales of physical game discs in 2028. However, new data revealed by Circana analyst Mat Piscatella highlights how years of stark economic trends helped lead Sony to that decision. 许多玩家一直在哀叹索尼最近宣布的将于 2028 年停止销售实体游戏光盘的决定。然而，Circana 分析师 Mat Piscatella 披露的最新数据凸显了多年来严峻的经济趋势是如何促使索尼做出这一决定的。

In a social media thread Thursday morning, Piscatella shared insights into Circana’s tracking data on physical game sales in the US dating back to 2003. A graph of those trends shows physical sales peaking in the 12 months ending June 2009, when 297 million units were sold across the US. Those physical unit sales have been on a steady downward trajectory since then, leading to just 37 million physical units selling in the US in the last 12 months. 在周四上午的一系列社交媒体帖文中，Piscatella 分享了 Circana 自 2003 年以来对美国实体游戏销售情况的追踪数据。趋势图显示，实体游戏销量在截至 2009 年 6 月的 12 个月内达到顶峰，全美共售出 2.97 亿份。自那时起，实体游戏销量一直呈稳步下滑趋势，在过去 12 个月中，美国实体游戏的销量仅为 3700 万份。

The newly revealed data follows on an earlier post from Piscatella highlighting that only seven PlayStation games had sold over 100,000 physical units so far in 2026. Today, Piscatella followed up on that stat with a graph showing how this baseline used to be common; 100 PlayStation games sold at least 100,000 physical units in 2008. The ceiling for physical PlayStation game sales isn’t all that impressive these days either; Piscatella shared that the top-selling physical PlayStation game has only sold a paltry 275,000 units in the US so far this year. 此前，Piscatella 曾发文指出，2026 年迄今为止仅有 7 款 PlayStation 游戏实体销量超过 10 万份。今天，他进一步补充了一张图表，显示这一基准线在过去曾是常态：2008 年有 100 款 PlayStation 游戏实体销量至少达到 10 万份。如今，PlayStation 实体游戏的销售上限也并不乐观；Piscatella 分享道，今年迄今为止，美国销量最高的 PlayStation 实体游戏仅售出了区区 27.5 万份。

There are some small signs of hope for the physical game market, if you squint. Piscatella noted that aggregate spending on physical video games in the US was actually up 4 percent year-to-date, compared to the year before. But that small increase is a mere blip following 16 straight years of sizable declines in physical game spending in the US, reducing a peak of $11.5 billion in physical spending in 2009 to a mere $1.6 billion for the 12 months ending in May. 如果仔细观察，实体游戏市场仍有一些微小的希望迹象。Piscatella 指出，美国实体视频游戏的年度总支出实际上比去年增长了 4%。但这种小幅增长与美国实体游戏支出连续 16 年的大幅下滑相比，不过是沧海一粟。实体游戏支出已从 2009 年 115 亿美元的峰值，降至截至 5 月份的 12 个月内的仅 16 亿美元。

And Piscatella attributed the recent growth in physical spending to “the Switch 2 and physical sales growth on Nintendo platforms,” while other platforms (such as PlayStation) were still seeing “percentage drops from the teens to the mid 30s” in that spending. Piscatella 将近期实体支出的增长归因于“Switch 2 以及任天堂平台实体销量的增长”，而其他平台（如 PlayStation）的此类支出仍在经历“10% 到 30% 多”的跌幅。

The beginning of the end: Looking back, it’s easy to see why sales of physical games seemed to peak in the late 2000s. At that time, services like Xbox Live Arcade, PSN and WiiWare were already showing console gamers’ willingness to pay for downloads of smaller indie games, and the concept was expanding to downloadable versions of major releases like Infamous and LittleBigPlanet. 终结的开始：回首往事，不难理解为什么实体游戏销量会在 21 世纪 00 年代末达到顶峰。当时，Xbox Live Arcade、PSN 和 WiiWare 等服务已经显示出主机玩家愿意为下载小型独立游戏付费，这一概念随后扩展到了《声名狼藉》（Infamous）和《小小大星球》（LittleBigPlanet）等大作的数字下载版本。

By the time the PlayStation Vita launched in 2012, Sony required that all publishers that make physical game cartridges also offer a downloadable option. Subsequent consoles like the Wii U, PS4, and Xbox One continued that trend, and by the end of the 2010s, physical-exclusive console releases were practically nonexistent. In recent years, some big-budget games have been skipping a retail release altogether or offering “download in a box” retail options like Switch 2’s Game Key Cards or Grand Theft Auto VI‘s printed download codes. 到 2012 年 PlayStation Vita 发布时，索尼要求所有制作实体游戏卡带的发行商必须同时提供下载选项。随后的 Wii U、PS4 和 Xbox One 等主机延续了这一趋势，到 2010 年代末，仅发行实体版的主机游戏已几乎绝迹。近年来，一些大制作游戏甚至完全跳过了零售发行，或者提供“盒装下载”零售方案，例如 Switch 2 的游戏密钥卡或《侠盗猎车手 6》（Grand Theft Auto VI）的打印下载码。

Over the last 15 years or so, console gamers have overwhelmingly voted with their wallets in favor of all these digital download options, preferring the convenience of not leaving the house to purchase a game (or leaving the couch to switch to a new title) over the permanence of games on discs and cartridges. The shift has been so strong that many of today’s console gamers are fine skipping the disc drive entirely; Piscatella shared today that 27 percent of all PS5 hardware and 52 percent of all Xbox Series hardware sold in the US so far has been “Digital Only” editions. 在过去 15 年左右的时间里，主机玩家用钱包投出了压倒性的一票，支持所有这些数字下载选项。他们更看重无需出门购买游戏（或无需离开沙发即可切换新游戏）的便利性，而非光盘和卡带带来的实体永久性。这种转变非常强烈，以至于当今许多主机玩家完全可以接受没有光驱的设备；Piscatella 今天分享道，目前在美国售出的所有 PS5 硬件中，有 27% 是“纯数字版”，而 Xbox Series 硬件中这一比例高达 52%。

None of this data will be of much comfort to the small but passionate group of console gamers who still buy games they can hold in their hands. But the numbers pretty clearly explain why Sony doesn’t seem worried about losing what is, financially speaking, a rather small segment of its current gaming business. 对于那些仍然热衷于购买实体游戏的小众玩家群体来说，这些数据并不能带来多少安慰。但这些数字非常清楚地解释了为什么索尼似乎并不担心失去这部分业务——从财务角度来看，这在索尼当前的游戏业务中仅占很小一部分。