In 2025, physical game spending dropped to a new low in the US.
This is according to Circana analyst Mat Piscatella, who reports that based on tracked data — which dates back to 1995 — sales reached just $1.5 billion. Again, an all-time low.
Now, obviously, physical games still make money — it's not like physical media is dead off the back of this data. But it's a market that's very clearly in decline, and there's no real sign of it picking up any time soon.
Indeed, digital sales take up more and more of the game spending pie every year, and it's no secret that platform holders like Sony and Microsoft would prefer players to shop through their digital storefronts.
Digital game libraries make for a perfect incentive to keep players locked to a preferred platform — especially when you can buy consoles that don't even have a disc drive — and it goes without saying that companies save money by producing and shipping fewer discs, and the packaging that accompanies them.
And this is a global trend: a report on the UK's physical market from last year painted a particularly dire picture.
If there's one silver lining to this latest analysis, it's that the decline isn't quite as steep as you might expect. Piscatella says spending dropped by 11% in 2025 — which is the smallest decline since 2021, and a significant improvement over 2024's year-on-year decline of 28%.
What do you make of this, then? Are you still buying physical games? Wonder what the future holds in the comments section below.