Capcom’s catalogue supplies 87% of game sales—and physical units still grew

Capcom’s latest results show a business dominated by digital game sales without showing the disappearance of boxed copies. Digital accounted for 92.4% of units in the first half of the fiscal year ending March 2027. Physical units nevertheless rose sharply from the comparable period a year earlier. Share and growth answer different questions.

The company’s results presentation, published with its October reporting, records 36.86 million total units for the six months through September. It describes that as a first-half record, alongside a record for catalogue sales. These are Capcom’s figures, not a measurement of the whole games market.

The catalogue is doing most of the volume work

Games released before the current fiscal year account for 32.18 million units, or 87.3% of the total. “Catalogue” is a reporting category defined by release timing; it does not mean every game in it is old in the everyday sense. A recent release from the previous financial year can sit beside a title that has sold for many years.

That matters when interpreting a table full of familiar Resident Evil, Monster Hunter and Devil May Cry names. The finding is not simply that players rejected new releases. A large accumulated catalogue has many more opportunities to sell than a handful of new launches, often at different prices and in different regions.

Unit sales also do not reveal the money received per copy. A deeply discounted older game and a full-price release each count as one unit. The volume mix therefore cannot, on its own, establish which individual title generated the most revenue or profit.

Physical sales grew inside a digital-heavy business

Capcom reports 2.81 million physical units, up from 1.44 million in the comparable half. That is a 95.1% increase, even though physical copies remain only 7.6% of the current total. A small category can grow quickly while another category continues to dominate the business.

The digital breakdown also makes PC important: it represents 57.1% of all units, while digital console copies account for 35.3%. Those percentages describe this publisher’s distribution mix. They do not prove that the same proportions apply to another publisher, a particular game or the installed population of players.

What the numbers mean for the games themselves

A catalogue that continues to sell gives a publisher a reason to keep older titles discoverable, compatible and attractively priced. That is an inference about the incentive, not a promise that every game will receive another patch or port. Support decisions still depend on the title and the cost of maintaining it.

For readers, the useful conclusion is more specific than “everything is digital.” Capcom is selling most copies through downloads, drawing much of its volume from earlier releases, and still selling more boxed units than a year ago. Its back catalogue is not merely a shelf behind the new games; it is a large part of the business that pays for the next ones.