2026’s top PlayStation games by copies sold, including physical splits
It’s all blockbusters all the time, and perhaps a bit more data on PlayStation’s rationale for the death of the disc. Let's look at Alinea's estimates for 2026 copies sold (so far).
It’s been a busy week for Sony. In case you missed it, we covered our reaction to the death-of-the-disc news in Wednesday’s newsletter. Today, let’s dig into our estimates for the top-selling games on PlayStation so far this year, plus how many of those copies were physical.
We’re talking sold-through here, so no unsold retailer copies (for as long as that remains a thing…).
Dead ball: footie and zombies take #1 and #2
FC 26 is the top PlayStation game by copies sold this year, in no small part thanks to the World Cup fever currently sweeping the globe (and the marketing around it). We won’t flog that dead horse again, so here’s a few high-level FC 26 estimates:
Around 12% of FC 26’s PlayStation copies sold this year were physical.
About 78% were PS5 copies (the rest PS4).
Around 6.4M PlayStation players accessed FC 26 for the first time this year via their PS Plus subscription.
Almost 30M PlayStation players have played FC 26 overall, and 82% of them played last month.
Resident Evil Requiem, which launched at the end of February this year, has sold 3.5M copies on PS5 alone, about 27.8% physical. Requiem has already generated $250M in gross revenue on PlayStation, and that number will keep ticking up.
Let’s be honest, Requiem is a short game, though. And our estimates have 25% (almost 900K players) of Requiem’s PS5 player base clocking under 10 hours. What I’m getting at here is that plenty of those physical copies will end up in the hands of resellers, which is exactly what neither Capcom nor PlayStation wants.
Capcom, for its part, has been quite gleeful (and gleefully un-quiet) about how much back-catalogue revenue it’s making on PC. It calls this its “flywheel-driven business model,” a phrase it loves dropping into its investor documents:
Sony is reading this data too, and working out just how much Valve is pocketing from Capcom’s PC catalogue. With its no-discs-in-2028 decision, Sony wants a bigger piece of that flywheel. Come Resident Evil 10, PlayStation and Capcom will be splitting those back-catalogue revenues between them, with no resale market skimming the top. Great for the two of them; rotten for retailers and for anyone hoping to resell.
More blockbusters round things out
As for the rest of the 2026 PlayStation copies-sold ranking:
Arc Raiders has sold 2.1M copies ($80M) on PS5 this year, bringing its PS5 total to 4.7M, all digital, since there’s no physical version. That said, 1.6M of this year’s 2.1M came in the first three months (almost a million in January alone), when the game was still having its moment. Arc Raiders sold under 100K last month, even with its biggest PS5 discount to date ($30). So it’s all about keeping the existing players engaged now. DAUs are expectedly dropping on PlayStation, down to around 200K from a peak near a million.
007 First Light has now shifted (not stirred!) 2M copies on PS5, its biggest platform by players (almost 60%), in just over two months on the market. 007 has made about $142M on PS5, more than Steam and Xbox put together, and around 21% of copies are physical. PlayStation players are clearly primed for this kind of game. IOI is trying a lighter live-service model here, but it’s also a short (albeit amazing) game, so expect plenty of resold copies. Again, PlayStation doesn’t like this (and neither does IOI).
Crimson Desert, which launched on 19 March, has sold 1.9M copies on PS5, its secondary platform after Steam, with 19.9% of PS5 copies being physical. Over 1.5M of those PS5 copies sold across March and April. Last month Crimson Desert sold about 112K copies ($8M). To date, Crimson Desert has generated $140M gross on PS5. Units are dropping off, but that $70 price is holding firm. Time for a discount, I reckon
Forza Horizon 5 just keeps selling on PS5, adding another 1.2M copies this year ($55M) since its PS5 port last May, for a PS5 total of 6.2M. Remarkably, it’s still doing 150K-250K a month. And while the Steam version (2021) has sold more copies (8.3M), regional pricing and discounting mean the PS5 version has already out-earned it via copies sold ($340M versus $314M on Steam). The sequel, Forza Horizon 6, has sold 3.4M on Steam ($192M). One can only imagine how much it’d have made on PS5 day-and-date. Forza Horizon 6 will sell gangbusters when it hits PS5 later this year, and Xbox will be watching those numbers VERY closely.
Ghost of Yotei is holding strong following its October 2025 launch, adding another 1.2M copies ($80M in back-catalogue revenue) this year. Around 35.4% of those were physical, the highest share on this list, and – again – the kind of number PlayStation wants to curb for its first-party games from 2028. Monthly copies have been consistent all year, the mark of a game that just keeps selling, and it’s only had one discount, so most of this year’s copies sold at the full $70. A great sign for Yotei’s ongoing run, and another reason PlayStation wants to own the pricing.
What does this tell us about PlayStation’s discless future?
While launch – as ever – takes the lion’s share of revenue, every game here keeps selling long after those initial launch months, and the ones with the highest physical shares (Ghost of Yotei at 35%, Resident Evil Requiem at 28%) are the evergreen, resale-friendly titles PlayStation and Capcom would like to keep control of.
Sony frames its appetite for disc destruction (keep reading for another ‘’I’m old’’ rock reference) as simply following its customers. While that’s somewhat true – digital is where most players already are – this is all about profit, control, and lifetime value from players.
There will also be some benefits for devs, as we mentioned earlier this week. But the truth is that every physical copy of a short, replayable game like Requiem or even a full-price open-world evergreen like Yotei is a copy that can be traded in and resold, revenue that flows to a reseller instead of to Sony or the publisher.
Multiply that across a catalogue that keeps selling for years, and we can see why the disc looks like a hole in the bucket – from where Sony sits, anyway. That’s the through-line between this ranking and Wednesday’s bye-bye-discs announcement.
Besides live services, the games making PlayStation a lot of money over time are catalogue ones. And catalogue is where the second-hand market does the most damage to the platform’s cut. An accumulated catalogue of titles makes newer releases harder to buy for many gamers, too.
Capcom’s ‘’flywheel’’ shows what a fully digital, catalogue-led model looks like when it hums. Sony wants that same flywheel, spinning on its own storefront, with no disc siphoning value off the side. Just like Steam.
Another reason beyond nuking resale is price control. I’m sounding like a broken record here (no pun intended…), but physical pricing is elastic and beholden to supply and demand, which is why pre-owned discs routinely undercut the digital storefronts.
As long as cheap second-hand copies sit on shelves and on eBay, they set a price floor Sony and publishers can’t control, giving every player a potential “just wait and buy it used” option, indefinitely.
With no discs, Sony and the publishers (whose sales flow to Sony on PlayStation) own that curve:
How high a game launches.
How long it holds a price.
And, crucially, how much (and when) it ever discounts.
As a physical collector myself, I bloody hate this. There’s something about a shelf of games you actually own that a licence list on an account will never replace. But, as an analyst, I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t where the market has been heading for years. But I have to look at these objectively, as an analyst.
I hate to say this, but most of the online anger will stay exactly that, anger (I’m angry, too, to be honest). I’m not saying players are being performative, they’re pissed, but we’ve seen this one before with horse armour, with live service, with $70 (now $80) games, with always-online requirements.
Players decry it loudly (and should!), then we buy anyway, because there’s not much choice left to vote with, especially in this case. This is a big deal, don’t get me wrong. When both major console platforms are heading the same way, and Steam is another all-digital platform (albeit, a more open one), “vote with your wallet” stops meaning much.
The writing’s been on the wall for a while. The ink dried on Wednesday, though. And there’s probably no going back. To quote a legendary band I saw the other day, you know it’s…
Want to get your hands on our data for yourself – for free?
We’re offering a free trial of our platform for games companies.
Send us a message here, or reply to this email, and we’ll set you up.
The last word
Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover.
[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]