Every PlayStation Store buys differently
By Pranay. Figures read from the ps-store-db database on 13 September 2026.
We talk about the PlayStation Store as 1 place, and commercially it mostly is. But when I line up the Top 25 of 20 countries side by side, they are clearly not buying the same things. The average store's Top 25 holds 12.5 games released in 2026, 6.5 free to play titles and 6.0 older games. Almost no store actually looks like that average.
The stores that buy this year's releases
Canada leads with 15 of its 25 from 2026, followed by Germany on 14, India on 14, Saudi Arabia on 14. At the other end, Japan has just 8.
A chart full of new releases is a chart of people buying at or near full price, which is the healthiest possible mix for publishers. When I see a store consistently near the top of this list, I read it as a market where the audience is engaged, well served with day 1 releases, and comfortable paying for them.
The stores that run on free to play
Japan is the outlier of the whole dataset, with 14 of its 25 free to play. United States and Taiwan follow at 9 and 9. Then look at the bottom: India has 1.
The way I read it, there are 2 different storylines sitting inside that column:
- In Japan and across East Asia, free to play is not the budget option, it is the mainstream. These charts are ranked on engagement and spending inside games that cost nothing to start, and the audience has been trained on that model for years, largely through mobile.
- In the markets at the bottom of that column, the same games exist and simply do not chart. The audience there is still buying premium games outright.
The stores that live on the back catalog
India carries the most older games at 10, with Turkey on 9 and Germany on 8. United States has 3.
This is the price sensitivity column, and I would say it is the most useful one on the page. A Top 25 stuffed with 4 year old games is a chart being driven by discounts rather than by releases. These are markets where a 70% cut moves more units than a new launch does, and where the catalog is doing the heavy lifting all year.
What is actually at number 1
Across the 20 stores I feature, today's number 1 is Grand Theft Auto VI in 7, EA SPORTS FC™ 27 in 6, NBA 2K27 in 2, Onimusha: Way of the Sword in 2, NHL 27 in 1. That concentration at the top is normal. The differences between countries are not really at number 1, they are in the 20 places underneath it.
My read
The generally accepted story is that gaming has globalised and everyone plays the same games. On the top line that is true, because the same 2 or 3 titles sit at number 1 nearly everywhere. Underneath it, the mix is extremely local, and it maps onto how much money the audience has and what they were raised on.
I definitely feel this is the part publishers get wrong most often. A game that charts at number 4 in Canada and number 40 in India has not failed in the second market. It is very probably priced for the first one. Whether that gets fixed now, next year or 3 years later, the stores that run on the catalog are the ones where a pricing decision changes the outcome most.
Every number here is computed live from the charts and prices this site records, so the article changes as the stores do.