PlayStation Ejects their Disc business
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Physical Abuse
The date is finally set, a scary moment that myself and many others have been warning about for decades, has finally landed. Today, July 1st 2026, Sony PlayStation announced on their blog that as of January 2028, they will no longer produce physical discs for their PlayStation 5 console. This will include all 1st Party and 3rd Parties (as they have to buy the disc production licence from Sony), and means that from 2028 Digital downloads are the only way new games or re-releases will be distributed.
As consumer preferences and the broader entertainment industry continue to shift away from physical discs to digital, physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting January 2028. Following this date, new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only. This transition has no impact on games that already released, or will be releasing, prior to January 2028 in disc format.
As I talked about over the years, this has been a gradual erosion of the “ownership” of games since they started back in the early 70s. Like music and movies before it, the progress to this point has been a slow but progressive one. With the final Bastion of physical game sales left, PlayStation have offered the choice to buy or rent as a parallel. This latest decision is mirrored, ironically or poetically, with the second and final announcement of the end of PS3 and PSVita online marketplace. Meaning that only PS4 will start and end its life-span as the last console from PlayStation that offered the dual choice throughout its active life-span. I waxed lyrical about the benefits of owning the Day 1, original cartridge, tape, disc or even SD-Card back at the PS5’s launch with the Last Guardian’s BC 4K/60 enhancements with that retail disc and is again poignant in highlighting what we will miss without real. genuine, game ownership.
The market has been following the trend PC set back in 2002 when Valve opened up the Steam Market on the back of Half-Life 2. With last year being the highest yet for PlayStation, with digital sales now being over 78% of their total sales in the past 12 months, a growth of 2% on the last year. As such, this is a clear tipping point they have decided to push over the edge. With that final circa 20% likely being exponentially slower to change over, as such cutting of the supply will likely cost them less in the production/Op Costs than the sales they would gain.
This also, certifies, that any hopes of the PS6 being digital are gone and that the Handheld and PS6 dual devices are nailed on to be a dual launch and use the same digital software natively. I am very, very sorry to read this and although It was always going to happen the impact this will have on all of us I believe is still widely ignored by the majority despite my pleas and details on what will happen, it will erase game preservation from this generation on outside of publisher or other Non trivial solutions. The quality of launch day code has never been worse in general, with patches long since becoming the standard, again something I warned of and was proven correct on at the start of the PS4 generation. In the end this is a sad day for many of us who starting playing games when physical was the ONLY way. Now, at the tail end of the current generation, that same Last Guardian is even more profound than at the start if this generation.
