Looks like it varies a lot by quarter, with this Q4 being about the same as Q4 2019 before the PS5 even came out, yet the PS4 still had better physical sales than this, so I still don't see how digital alone can account for PS5's lack of presence in the physical charts.

I ould rite a full eplanation but my keyboard sucks, and it is too much of a hassle. I have to use ctrl+v to rite "s". In short:

1. 2017-2020 peak Ps4 softare.

2. 2021-2024 peak Ns softare

3. Digital at minimum is 62% in the last 9 quarters.

4. Q1 and Q4 (January-June) have the highest digital rate, but lo overall softare rates.

5. Ps4 games can be played on Ps5.

6. Ns has a loer digital rate, especially in Japan.

7. Ps5 had massive stock issues hich affects hen people buy their softare, thus peak ps5 softare is a long time off and much delayed compared to consoles in normal conditions.

All of these things factor in to hat you are seeing ith the current famitsu charts.

Maybe you're comparing 9 millions ps4 in 2019 to 3 millions ps5. Also ps plus extra and premium only just came out a year ago 

I'm not expecting PS5 sales now to equal peak PS4 sales, but current levels (in Japan) are still not great for a system where the hardware is selling the way it is. 

Do we have a graph on digital vs physical sales in Japan? I assume the previous chart is globally?

If it's true and a chunk of ps5's are being shipped off, then Sony needs to up its production for the Asian territories.

There should be plenty of stock by now

If they're selling then they're selling. As far as Sony is concerned it doesn't matter. But I believe the speculation is that a large amount are ending up on the grey market in China because they don't want Chinese PS5's so shipping more to China isn't going to do anything.

At the end of the day it's just speculation how much is being exported. The last time we had any official indication of how the PS5 is doing in Japan is May 2022 when it was the 3rd biggest country for the PS5 by "Active Consoles", not sales in that country this is consoles being actively used in that country so any units exported would not be counted.

Hopefully we get this again this May so we can see if Japan has remained third or not. But we know UK sales were greater than Japan and Germany sales were less than Japan so any exporting taking place is not large enough to make the active users ranking different to the console sales ranking.

Unfortunately we don't have exact sales numbers for Germany but as of March 2022 it was somewhere over 1 million, Famitsu has Japan at just under 1.5m for that date and we know the UK was ahead of Japan in terms of sales when it hit 2m later in 2022.

Basically the number of consoles being exported from Japan isn't as high as some would have you believe, and the real answer is we have no idea how many are being exported but it's not enough to stop Japan being the 3rd most popular country for the PS5 at a time when Japan had just got shafted over the holidays with abysmal stock in comparison to western countries.

At this point its more or less been confirmed a notable portion ps5s sold in japan have been shipped elsewhere by notable reputable sources, whether that's still the case with the recent influx of supply I'm not sure, but it seems likely since the systems demand is still outnumbering supply. Everyone should accept by now that there are varios factors for playstation software decline, but in particular the actual japanese userbase is likely 30-50% less then pure retails sales numbers allude to, is the primary reason.

"The PlayStation 5 game consoles sold in Japan are flowing abroad on a large scale and more than half of them go to China, according to a report by The Nikkei.

The main reason for this is the recent JPY depreciation, which makes the console’s price in Japan look much cheaper to players using other currencies."

https://www.superpixel.com/article/201295/cheap-ps5-consoles-from-japan-are-flooding-china-s-grey-markets

Are you sure these numbers (1m sold by march 2022) aren't referencing German speaking countries versus the singular country. "[Ps5] has totalled sales of over one million units in Germany, Austria and Switzerland: the financial reports of Sony Interactive Entertainment Deutschland reveal it" Considering neither Switzerland or Austria are in the chart active user chart listed, yet Spain is with its abysmal sales, It's safe to say those other german speaking regions haven't sold 1m each and it was a collective figure.

"During the launch period, PlayStation 5 sold 490,000 units in German-speaking countries, after which in the following seven months it proceeded with approximately 80,000 pieces per month and a total of an additional 556,000 units.

In October 2021, the total number of PS5s sold between Germany, Austria and Switzerland was therefore exactly equal to 1,046,000 consoles : slightly higher results than PS4, but considered by Sony to be below expectations due to the aforementioned limited stocks."

https://www.realmicentral.com/2022/03/28/ps5-sales-of-over-one-million-units-in-germany-austria-and-switzerland/

It's also worth noting that game spending is markedly different this generation than last generation for PlayStation.