With Microsoft's continued console price hikes over the last few years, the team's all-digital offerings have become a more enticing proposition for consumers, and that appears to have reflected in the 2025 console sales split for Xbox Series X|S in the US.
Circana's Mat Piscatella has recently shared some "fun facts" about those disc drive vs. digital only console sales comparisons in the region. According to the firm (formerly NPD), 66% of US Xbox Series sales last year featured a console without a disc drive, while Sony's PS5 system came in at just about 50/50.
With the white all-digital Series X having been on the market since late 2024 at a cheaper price point than the standard black console, this perhaps isn't too surprising, but it's a pretty interesting development nonetheless. To see two thirds of current-gen Xbox sales be digital-only certainly shows where the market is going, at least over in the US.
Of course, this also leads to questions about Microsoft's next-gen strategy and where it leaves the next Xbox console. It seems likely that such a system will be more PC-like, and with that platform being almost exclusively-digital these days, we're intrigued to see whether the team offers a disc-drive console for next-gen. Even if it does offer this option, we'd hazard a guess that the digital version(s) would be more popular, especially if they come in at a cheaper price point!