In a weird twist, apparently consumer spending on new physical video games in the U.S. is actually up 5 percent year-over-year so far in 2026, and it’s mostly thanks to game-key cards.

Okay, it’s mostly thanks to there being way more game-key cards available than before, and the Switch 2…existing.

This comes from Circana, which reports the 5-percent increase on new physical software as largely due to a whopping 631-percent increase in spending on game-key cards, offsetting a 3-percent drop in everything else.

But that number sounded very suspicious, so I asked Circana’s Mat Piscatella what was up.

“Last year there were 10 titles published as Game-Key Cards,” he replied. “This year 54 more Game-Key Card titles have been published. So that’s the biggest reason. So, we are seeing new physical software sales showing growth for the first time in more than a decade. But that’s being driven primarily by Switch 2 and publishers leaning more into Game-Key Cards.”

So, yeah, Switch 2 is out, people want to buy more physical games on it than they do other consoles, there are more games available now than there were last year, and a lot of them are game-key cards. That explains that. (But if Sony asks, it’s totally because physical media is back in.)

Overall spending on content for just the month of August was down 10 percent, mostly due to a big drop in mobile spending, but console content spending was also down. PC was up, as was subscription spending.

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