🍀 Lucky Saint Iván 🍀

Capcom Q1 results are in and everybody talks about how 93 % of all sold units are digital. So here we go again and take the closer look almost nobody else will. You will love this! Remember, Sony was arguing their attack on physical media is based on shifting consumer trends. Surely Capcom will support that, right? Or maybe not. First of all, the digital-physical split includes PC games. 100 % digital with not other choice for the customer. That's over 60 percentage points of the 93 %. To check consumer preference, we can disregard this portion entirely. Just comparing console games we are looking at 17 % physical. Yeah, still not great, but still far from "physical is dead". How did this number come about, though? First we need to factor in digital games that ... ... might not be available physically in certain regions (or only in limited stores that do imports). ... didn't even have physical releases in the first place, like Monster Hunter Rise on PlayStation, e.g. Those are in the digital tally without an option for the consumer. Not qualified to make a statement about preference. Another big factor is what types of games were sold in Q1 2026. Almost 90 % of all sold games are so-called "catalog units". Older games, which might not be available in retail anymore due to being sold out. Add to that that those often land in digital sales with heavy discounts, so if people shop for something online, they might be lured in to get the game that way. At least debatable whether that is actual preference. We'd argue against it. Then we need to look at which and how many new games came out. The Q1 2026 report banks primarily on Pragmata and Devil May Cry 5: Devil Hunter Edition according to Capcom. Not a lot. So while physical is obviously still the minority, it still doesn't support all the doomerism. And we have one more stat in the report to prove that, especially given that the other quarters for comparison had more games released: Year on year growth in physical units sold. The data shows that Capcom sold 1,3 million physical units in the same quarter in 2022 (only new game was Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak). 1,9 million in 2023. Then a big drop to 700k in 2024 and another to 680k in their 2025 fiscal year. What does their current fiscal year report show for this past quarter in 2026? 1,59 million units sold! The second highest year for Q1 in the past 5 years and a year on year growth of 133,8 % for this quarter. If you look at this data, it is obviously not meant to claim everybody plays physical. But our analysis should show you that everybody just going with the 93 % is not telling the full picture, once again. So please be aware of that.