A share of 60–70% is impressive enough, but there’s a company here that can boast an even higher percentage of sales from digital games.
The shift away from physical games is already well underway: PlayStation has warned its customers that disc production will end in 2028 — this information was even mentioned on PlayStation Direct, and we reported on it in our news the other day. Other companies (e.g. Take-Two and Ubisoft) also seem to support this decision. This is happening because most publishers already generate a significant proportion of their revenue from digital sales, and Square Enix is the latest to confirm this trend.
In a recently published financial report, Square Enix revealed that around 90% of its current game sales are from digital downloads. According to the Japanese publisher, this data is from regions including North America, Europe, Japan and Asia. The report states that the company sold a total of 7.38 million games in the first quarter of the 2027 fiscal year, 6.65 million of which were digital. It is important to note that the data may be slightly skewed in favour of digital games, as there are titles for which no physical edition was released. Nevertheless, this means that only 10% of sales came from retail copies.
Capcom previously reported similar figures, noting that digital games accounted for over 90% of its sales. Similarly, a significant portion of Sony’s most recent total revenue came from digital sales. In all three cases, revenue from physical games has dropped to such a negligible level that publishers are willing to abandon them entirely.
As Square Enix is not expected to object to PlayStation’s decision, the upcoming Final Fantasy VII Remake will likely be one of the studio’s last few AAA titles released on disc. Let’s be honest: if Square Enix had skipped this, Final Fantasy fans would have torn the Japanese publisher to shreds if there hadn’t been a Blu-ray version.
Source: Tech4gamers (https://tech4gamers.com/square-enix-90-sales-digital/), Square Enix (https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/pdf/27q1slides.pdf)