Monthly active users on PlayStation hit 127 million in September 2026, a record for that month and a 7% year-over-year increase, according to Sony’s official Q2 fiscal 2026 earnings materials. That figure arrived during the same quarter that the No Disc, No Buy movement and Does It Play’s PS5 blackout campaign were actively urging players to withhold spending and turn off their consoles.
No Disc, No Buy called on consumers to avoid purchasing games unavailable on physical disc. The PS5 blackout asked players to power down their consoles for a week, targeting Sony’s monthly active-user figures.
What Triggered the Campaigns
Frustration over a reported shift away from physical media gave both movements a concrete deadline to rally around.
The protests grew out of Sony’s reported plan to stop manufacturing physical versions of new PlayStation titles from January 2028 onward, alongside first-party studio closures and a strategic push toward live-service video games. Sony has not publicly announced any change to that reported plan.
The Quarter’s Figures
Every major engagement and revenue metric moved upward during the period the protests ran.
Total PlayStation playtime rose 4% year over year, per Sony’s earnings speech. The 127 million monthly active-user figure was eight million higher than a year earlier and two million above the prior fiscal quarter.
Digital purchases made up 78% of full-game software sales during the period, per Sony’s supplemental data. That figure excludes add-on content, and the share rose six percentage points compared with the same quarter in fiscal 2025.
Digital games generated approximately 330.8 billion yen, an increase of roughly 62.5 billion yen year over year. Physical-game revenue came in at approximately 43.1 billion yen, nearly 7.7 billion yen more than the comparable quarter last year.
Physical spending increased. It also remained roughly 7.7 times smaller than digital revenue in absolute terms.
Sony’s Game and Network Services segment posted approximately 1.2085 trillion yen in Q2 sales, up 9% year over year, per GamesIndustry.biz. Operating income rose 83% to approximately 220.1 billion yen. PS5 hardware unit sales fell from four million units in Q2 fiscal 2025 to 2.6 million, even as platform engagement reached a September record.
What These Numbers Cannot Actually Tell You
The figures measure outcomes, not intent, and they leave important questions about campaign impact unanswered.
A quarterly aggregate makes a brief blackout difficult to detect. Sony’s monthly active-user metric counts unique accounts active at any point during the relevant month, not daily console uptime. A week-long shutdown by a subset of players may not register in that figure at all.
The data also cannot determine whether the campaigns shifted participant sentiment or will influence purchasing behavior in future quarters. One analysis cited by Push Square suggested that nearly half of social-media replies promoting No Disc, No Buy may have come from inauthentic accounts. The underlying methodology was not independently verified, so that claim warrants caution.
The Commercial Math Sony Is Looking At
The revenue gap between digital and physical gives Sony limited financial pressure to reverse course, though the picture could shift.
The revenue disparity gives Sony limited financial incentive to change its digital direction. Physical-game revenue grew during the quarter, confirming that demand for physical products still exists. The trajectory, however, clearly favors digital. Sustained consumer behavior change, retailer pressure, or regulatory action could alter that calculation in future quarters.
