Square Enix's latest report shows that their digital to physical ratios in Japan and Asia are virtually identical to NA + Europe...

It's time we acknowledge that Japan's digital sales performance isn't necessarily different from the rest of the world. The difference maker is Nintendo's dominance, which skews the data more towards physical in the region. Otherwise Playstation's digital to physical ratio in Japan may be in line with other major regions.

The two fastest growing platforms there (PC and Mobile) are digital only. Sucks to admit it but digital is taking over everywhere. Even on Nintendo's side, GKC and expensive cartridges will inevitably promote digital adoption.

SE had a fantastic report, specially Rebirth did good numbers for them, they also mentioned how digital is most of their sales.

On the topic of SquEnix: I’m curious how many copies FFVII has moved on Switch 2 in Japan alone. They mentioned a figure of 9:1 (digital:physical) as far as overall software sales are concerned IIRC… though I’d imagine it’s a fair bit closer to 6:4 on NS2.

Yeah Rebirth was the No.1 selling game on PSN in the month of June and No.4 in May... There's clearly a lot of sales were not seeing for games that are happening in the digital space.

https://blog.ja.playstation.com/2026/07/09/20260709-monthly-ps-store-ranking-s/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

It's even more stark than that, Japan actually has the lower physical ratio compared to North America and Europe 

Percent of packaged sales:

NA/Europe ~15.6%.

Japan ~10.8%, 

I'm getting 10.3% for NA + Europe, and 12.8% for Japan.

Does it include PC? PS5 sales in Japan are average at best which might skew their titles to sells more on PC i.e. higher digital ratio 

I remember Elden Ring moved 1 million+ in Japan when it was only 270k retail combining PS4 (180k) and PS5 (90k), assuming a portion of those PS4 players went to PC or to digital-only PS5 the digital adoption must have increased a lot this gen

PC skews towards digital everywhere. But all evidence suggests that PS5 has a high digital to physical ratio in Japan for a console, likely comparable to the west. Earth Defense Force 6 was only available on PS4 and PS5 at launch, it sold 300k, less than a 100k of which were physical. Recent PS5 AA/AAA games probably have a digital range of 35-60% depending on the title.

Ys X Nordics had a digital ratio of 40% (across PS4, PS5, and Switch) by its 2nd or 3rd month. PS5 version sold the most copies (50%) and was the leader in digital ratio via extrapolation.

The digital skew outside Japan should in fact be a lot stronger, because PC, PS5 and certainly Xbox are proportionally bigger in the west, and Nintendo (which is a lot more physical biased) is proportionally bigger in Japan.

I won't even pretend to do the math i just threw the chart into ai analysis, so that could be wrong as AI often is lol 

It does include PC.

PS5 sales in Japan are only 1m short of PS4 (around 12%) but software is drastically worse, even if we were to imagine 1million of the recorded PS5 sales went to people outside of Japan the software ratio is still extremely off compared to the userbase.

Essentially before we even speak about PC we've just got to acknowledge that PS5 software sales are likely increasingly digital and the retail charts is not a good representation of what is selling on the platform. As mentioned Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was the best selling PS5 game on PSN in June 2026, 4th best selling in May etc. Meanwhile the PS5 SKU hasn't been seen on Famistu retail chart for 2 years. There's a huge part of the picture we're missing on Playstation software