Sony to Stop Producing Physical Discs from 2028

Sony has announced they are intending to stop physical disc production for PlayStation games from January 2028.

The move, announced on the Official PlayStation Blog, has led to widespread outcry from the industry at large, as they argue this will not only harm consumer choice, but videogame preservation.

Sony claims the move is due to customer preference moving to digital over time. It says in 2028 and beyond, games will only be sold in digital formats via the PlayStation Store, but it will continue to support retailers who can sell digital licenses of their titles.

Via GameSpot's reporting, Video Game History Foundation director Frank Cifaldi gave a statement on Bluesky, calling out the lack of support from industry bodies such as the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) over its opposition to copy protection legislation changes and its disregard for the need for archives and the heritage institutions that can support such an endeavour.

Other companies which rely on physical media, such as game-rental service GameFly and iam8bit have chimed in. While these are bodies with vested interests in the supply and trade of physical media, it goes to show the range of businesses that this change will impact.

The backlash has not been helped by a simultaneous announcement that Sony will begin to wind down its digital storefronts for the PlayStation 3 and Vita starting this year in some Latin American regions, then a wave in the rest of Latin America and the Middle East by "late 2026", before finally sunsetting the stores by July 2027.

Rockstar's decision to ship Grand Theft Auto VI without a disc when it launches later this year might just be the starting shot in the war against physical, after some false starts going back to the aborted digital-only launch of the Xbox One in 2013.

The Boardroom Read

There are a few lenses to this decision, and likely the first one that Sony thought about here was cost: If rumours are to be believed, the PlayStation 6 will not be cheap, and not having to account for a disc drive in Sony's next console will certainly help, both in the unit cost of the console itself, and also when it comes to the cost of goods and production of the games it'll play.

The other angle is technology: Games are only getting more storage-demanding, and the PS5 can only handle Blu-ray discs of up to around 100GB on-disc. Even the largest Blu-ray discs max out at around 128GB. According to TheGamer, the largest PS5 game is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III which sits at over 200GB on a PS5 hard drive. As games and console architecture rely more on streaming uncompressed assets, we may be looking at even bigger downloads going forward.

The real, largely unspoken cost here is to consumer rights. With no more disc, players are effectively losing their right to sell pre-owned copies of their games. Not only does this make access to games harder for those with tighter wallets, it also impacts the inherent value of a game. You don't own anything but a revocable license. Just last week we saw another example of this, with PlayStation revoking over 500 StudioCanal movies from PlayStation users' accounts.

I suspect we'll also see a tighter control of pricing. We already see this happening in the PlayStation Store: Per GamesIndustry.biz, Sony has been running A/B price testing for the same item on the PlayStation Store, and even if retailers are able to "sell" digital copies, who controls the supply and availability of these goods?

My prediction? Prepare for more expensive games (both in cost and storage). I'm curious to see if the incoming flood of criticism is enough to stave off the beast yet again, as it once did for Microsoft, but I'm not counting on it happening this time. It'll be interesting to see what Xbox's response is, especially with Project Helix around the corner, and CEO Asha Sharma's big "reset" taking place.

If you want to hear more about what's going on, check out our first episode of the Level Up Times Show released yesterday, where I talked at length about how consumer rights are being eroded, with the rise of digital-only starting to really show its face in the coming generation.