A games industry analyst has predicted we have less than 10 years until physical games cease to exist, despite a small uptick in sales in the US.
Between the demise of physical retailers and the dominance of digital sales, physical games have long felt like they’re on borrowed time.
The future of boxed games took a knock this week when Rockstar announced physical copies of GTA 6 will only contain a download code at launch. While there are rumours a disc version could come later, it’s not a great sign when one of the biggest gaming franchises in the world is skipping a proper physical version out of the gate.
Circana’s senior director Mat Piscatella has now made a bold proclamation in light of recent US sales data, claiming physical software will disappear entirely over the next decade.
On Bluesky, Piscatella shared a graph showing US physical game spending from 2007 to 2026. As you can see below, there’s been a consistent decline since 2009, with 2025 marking a record low.
However, the downwards trend reversed this year for the first time since 2009. For the 12-month period ending May 2026, spending on physical games in the US increased 3% over the previous year to $1.6 billion (£1.2 billion).
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While physical collectors might be tempted to rally the troops for the anti-digital revolution, Piscatella has thrown in some pesky context to destroy your dreams.
‘The overwhelming majority of volume is done digitally now,’ he wrote on Bluesky. ‘The second-hand market… doesn’t really matter.
‘More than half of all Xbox Series consoles in the US don’t have a physical drive, while over a quarter of PlayStation 5’s are the same. We likely have less than a decade left of physical software.’
So, even with this bleak prediction, why has there been a small increase? It’s unclear exactly, but it could be due to the launch of the Switch 2, whose audience typically buys more physical games than any other.
If physical games are on the way out, a big indicator will be Sony and Microsoft’s approach to their next generation consoles. If they do offer different physical and digital SKUs, like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, the rising console prices due to the memory shortage might make the inevitably cheaper digital option more attractive than it ever was.
Then again hard drives are second only to memory in terms of scarcity and cost at the moment, so you could argue that physical copies will be more useful next gen than this gen.
While it’s hard to imagine a world without physical games entirely, the prospect of it being a niche interest reserved for specialist stores like iam8bit or Limited Run feels increasingly likely.
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