Marvel’s Wolverine is on track to be one of the last first-party PlayStation games that gets released on disc. You might think that means that boxed copy sales of the new PS5 exclusive are inconsequential, but new estimates claim that’s not the case. According to data from Ampere Analysis, roughly 35 percent of Wolverine sales were disc versions of the game.
That data was shared with The Game Business, which also has a breakdown of estimates for the rest of PlayStation’s top-selling games in September 2025. It wasn’t the only game that performed well physically on Sony’s console. The Blood of Dawnwalker was estimated to sell 36 percent of its copies physically, while Silent Hill Townfall was estimated to have a whopping 45 percent in disc form. Physical sales were particularly strong in parts of Europe, where PlayStation remains the dominant gaming platform.
How much of this is the last gasp of a dwindling trend as fans rush out to buy what they still can before Sony phases out discs entirely, and how much of it is a sign that there’s still a business case for not executing the digital gaming equivalent of Order 66 just yet?
“People have a need to collect,” NYU business professor and gaming analyst Joost van Dreunen told The Game Business. “That’s where physical sales are still incredibly relevant for the consumer market. The industry is ready to move on, but not so fast. This is increasingly a big part of it.”
Physical gaming spending was actually up month-over-month in the U.S. for August due to the explosion in game-key card sales for Switch 2 as players gobble up new releases and ports like Elden Ring. Months into Sony’s contentious decision to rip the band-aid off and herald an all-digital gaming future, the controversial move feels more open than ever to being potentially re-evaluated, especially if Xbox makes the unexpected move of preserving some version of physical gaming for its family of next-gen Project Helix devices
