Spider-Man 2 Disc Sales May Account for 35% of Its $1.2 Billion Revenue Estimate

Physical PlayStation games may represent a larger share of blockbuster revenue than the industry's continuing shift to digital storefronts might suggest. Estimates from Rhys Elliott of Alinea Analytics place Marvel's Spider-Man 2 at approximately $1.2 billion in gross revenue, with 35% of that total attributed to boxed copies. The analysis arrives amid intensified discussion about Sony's stated move away from physical PlayStation releases and what the loss of discs could mean for players, retailers, preservation, and the secondhand market.

The headline number is striking not simply because Insomniac Games' superhero sequel has earned so much, but because of the suggested split. If the estimate is accurate, physical sales supplied more than a third of the game's gross revenue despite digital distribution becoming the dominant method for many major releases. That does not necessarily mean discs are more profitable per copy for PlayStation. In fact, the report's central argument is that the opposite is a major reason Sony may prefer a digital-only future.

Physical copies still matter for premium single-player games

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is not the only PlayStation-associated release cited in the analysis. Several recent high-profile, story-led games are estimated to have earned a considerable portion of their revenue through physical editions:

• Marvel's Spider-Man 2: an estimated $1.2 billion in gross revenue, with 35% from physical sales.
• Ghost of Yotei: an estimated $400 million in gross revenue, with physical contributing 37.6%.
• Astro Bot: an estimated $275 million in gross revenue, with 46.8% coming from physical sales.
• Death Stranding 2: an estimated $129 million in gross revenue, with 41.8% attributed to physical copies.

Those figures should be treated as market estimates rather than official financial disclosures. They are nevertheless useful for illustrating an important distinction often lost in debates over physical media: unit share and revenue share are not the same thing. Previous public discussions have frequently focused on the percentage of games sold digitally versus physically in terms of units. Elliott's figures instead concern the revenue generated by each channel.

For useful background on this topic, read Sony's Physint Exit and Marvel's Wolverine Reception Deepen Questions About PlayStation strategy.

That distinction can make a meaningful difference. Physical editions of premium releases commonly sell at full price around launch, particularly among collectors and fans who want an item for their shelf. Digital purchases can also be full-price, of course, but they are more readily tied to platform-specific promotions, subscriptions, bundles, and long-tail discounting. Revenue-based comparisons can therefore produce a different picture from raw unit-sales data.

The games listed also belong to a category with a particularly durable physical audience: prestige single-player releases. These are cinematic, campaign-driven games that often attract dedicated console buyers, collectors, gift purchasers, and players who value resale options. A player who buys a competitive game expected to receive years of updates may be more comfortable maintaining a wholly digital library. Someone buying a 20-to-40-hour adventure may see more value in being able to lend, trade, display, or later sell a disc.

Gross revenue is not the same as profit

Even if physical editions account for a major slice of gross spending, Sony does not retain the same share of every dollar spent on a disc as it can from a digital PlayStation Store transaction. A boxed game involves manufacturing, shipping, warehousing, and retail distribution. Stores selling the product receive a cut as well. Digital distribution eliminates many of those costs and puts the platform holder in a much stronger position to control the transaction from beginning to end.

That is the key to the argument advanced by Elliott: the decision to diminish or end physical releases is less about discs no longer generating money and more about margins and market control. A physical sale may still be valuable, but a digital sale can be worth considerably more to the company after the retailer's share and supply-chain costs are removed.

Digital storefronts additionally give a platform owner direct control over pricing, discounts, regional availability, delistings, refund systems, account access, and discoverability. With a disc, the buyer possesses a tangible item that can be passed to another person. With a digital purchase, access is generally governed by a platform account and the terms of the storefront. The latter model gives Sony more oversight over how a PlayStation game is bought and used after the initial sale.

For a business looking at long-term platform revenue, those advantages can outweigh the gross revenue lost if a portion of physical customers choose not to convert. The calculation is not necessarily that every former disc buyer will buy digitally. Rather, it may be that the higher net return from digital buyers, combined with the removal of physical costs, offsets the loss of customers who prefer boxed media.

The secondhand market remains a major dividing line

The most contentious implication of a digital-only direction is the disappearance of the secondhand market. A disc can be traded to a friend, sold to a retailer, rented, purchased used at a lower price, or kept usable across years without being tied to a specific online marketplace. While modern console games can still rely on patches, downloads, and servers, a physical copy preserves a degree of ownership and flexibility that a license attached to an account does not provide.

Used-game sales do not generate a new payment for the publisher or platform holder every time a disc changes hands. From a corporate perspective, that is lost potential revenue. From the player perspective, it is one of the central benefits of buying physical games in the first place. It lowers the effective cost of trying new releases and lets players recover part of the purchase price after finishing a game.

Removing discs can therefore affect more than collectors. It may hit budget-conscious players who rely on pre-owned shelves, families that share games across households, and rural or bandwidth-limited customers for whom downloading enormous modern titles is inconvenient or impractical. Retail stores could also lose one of the clearest reasons for customers to visit in person.

There is also a preservation concern. A physical disc is not a guarantee that a game will remain fully playable forever, especially in an era of online authentication and substantial day-one patches. Still, it provides an additional path to access. An all-digital catalog can be altered, withdrawn, or made inaccessible when licenses expire, storefront policies change, or platform support ends. That does not mean every digital game will vanish, but it means consumers have fewer independent options when something does.

"Consumer preferences" and the pressure to go digital

Sony has pointed to consumer preferences for digital games when explaining its broader direction. There is undeniable evidence that digital buying has become deeply entrenched across the games business. Digital storefronts are immediate, do not require stock checks, and make it easy to preload a major launch or purchase downloadable content. Many players have already built libraries so large that a physical drive is no longer essential to their habits.

But the estimates surrounding Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Astro Bot, Ghost of Yotei, and Death Stranding 2 indicate that preference is not uniform. The strength of physical revenue in these premium releases suggests that discs remain commercially significant among a segment of the PlayStation audience. A company can accurately observe a larger digital trend while still making a strategic choice that sidelines a meaningful and profitable physical customer base.

That nuance matters as attention turns to the next console generation. An all-digital PS6 has not been formally detailed here, but the possibility is already a concern for players who want to retain the choice between downloading a game and purchasing it at retail. The availability of a detachable disc drive in the current PlayStation ecosystem has offered one compromise, though it still places physical access behind an additional purchase and does not settle the broader question of future software support.

A profitable format can still be phased out

The debate is not really about whether physical games make money. The estimates suggest that they do, particularly for expensive single-player releases with strong collector appeal. The issue is whether physical games make enough money compared with a tightly controlled digital alternative.

For Sony, digital distribution promises better margins, direct customer relationships, reduced logistical complexity, and a closed ecosystem in which every new purchase is routed through PlayStation's own marketplace. For players, physical media offers ownership-like benefits that digital licenses struggle to replicate: resale, lending, price competition, offline access in some circumstances, and the simple permanence of having a game on a shelf.

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 may be one of the clearest examples of that tension. Even with a reported 35% of its estimated $1.2 billion gross coming from discs, a digital-first strategy can still look more attractive to a platform holder focused on net revenue and control. For consumers, however, the same figures strengthen the argument that physical gaming is not a dead format being abandoned because nobody wants it. It is a format that may be left behind precisely because it gives players and retailers more freedom than an all-digital marketplace does.