GTA 6 and Black Ops Stats Don't Reflect the Disc Boycott

Anyone who's paying attention to the gaming social media circuit recently has surely noticed people mocking the disc boycott based on some new sales figures. It appears that everyone is showing off their GTA 6 pre-order stats and Black Ops player numbers, as if it's ultimate proof.

In reality, the reasoning for this just doesn't add up when it’s analyzed. Analyst estimates are putting GTA 6's first week of pre-orders at around $260 million globally. Based on that pace, some are predicting the game could move somewhere between 37 and 52 million copies in its opening week alone once it launches in November. That's a staggering number by any measure.

It's part of why so many people are treating this as some kind of referendum on the physical disc boycott.

You've got Black Ops 1 and Black Ops 2, which just had their player counts revealed. Black Ops 1 pulled in about 1.9 million players on PS5 in the US this past week, and Black Ops 2 hit 5.2 million players over the same stretch. On top of that, you'll remember when these games first hit the PlayStation Store, demand was so high that PSN nearly buckled under the traffic.

It’s obvious that you see this being used as talking points now, with the argument boiling down to the following: How can someone say they’re boycotting Sony when GTA 6, which is a purely digital release, is generating hundreds of millions before its launch?

And not to mention that millions of users have started playing Black Ops 1 and 2, which are both digital-only releases too. Look, when you actually sit with this, it's a strange argument to make. You already know that people who buy physical copies of games make up a small slice of the overall gaming audience. Most gamers, by a wide margin, buy digital.

That's just the reality of the market right now. So it's odd that people understand this when it's convenient, but somehow forget it the moment Black Ops numbers come up. Let's set GTA 6 aside for a second, because that one's a different conversation entirely.

You can't really blame anyone for buying GTA 6 digitally when digital is the only option available.

This is a game people have been waiting on for well over a decade at this point. Framing someone's support for GTA 6 as a betrayal of the boycott doesn't really hold up, since there was no physical version on the table to begin with.

Now, shifting back to Black Ops 1 and 2. You're talking about several million players out of a PS5 install base that's sitting north of 90 million consoles worldwide. Given that most people buy games digitally anyway, why would millions of players on a Call of Duty title be surprising to anyone? Are there people participating in the boycott who still bought Black Ops 1 and 2 digitally?

Almost certainly, yes. But using those player numbers as proof the entire boycott movement is fake or exaggerated just doesn't add up when you consider how digital-first the audience already is. It's also worth pointing out that the people who mainly pick up Call of Duty games tend to skew more casual compared to the crowd that consistently buys physical copies.

The physical-buying crowd tends to lean more toward collectors and hardcore gamers who care about owning a tangible copy of what they play. That's a completely different demographic than the average Call of Duty buyer jumping in for the multiplayer.

Beyond the numbers, you can still see the physical disc boycott showing up everywhere online.

Comment sections on YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram are still packed with people voicing their frustration directly at Sony. Developers have also started reacting publicly, with some admitting they're not thrilled about paying Sony to run ads for their own games only to have those posts flooded with disc-related backlash in the replies.

For now, it's a matter of waiting to see whether anything shifts in the coming days, or whether it ends up being another stretch of silence from Sony while the physical disc boycott conversation keeps playing out across social media.