Around here, we tend to like physical media. When you own it, you actually own it, and a huge corporation can’t make it disappear due to shifting rights or tax write-offs or for other, mysterious reasons. But the big companies disagree. The latest among them is PlayStation, which announced this morning that they’ll be ending production of physical game discs in January 2028.
This comes from a blog post attributed to Sony Interactive Entertainment Content Communications Senior Director Sid Shuman, who writes that the decision reflects “shifting trends in consumer preference.” After January 2028, new games will be released in digital formats only, but clarifies that games that are already slotted for release on disc before January 2028 will not be affected. The post continues: “This is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs. This transition will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today.”
Needless to say, this decision has not been an especially popular one online, either in the comments section of the PlayStation blog or social media sites like Bluesky. While Sony hasn’t yet officially confirmed the capabilities of the upcoming PS6, outlets like Kotaku speculate that this means there’s a good chance the upcoming console won’t even have a disc drive, raising more questions about what kinds of backwards compatibility the console will even be able to offer. As IGN reported earlier this week, there were already concerns about the cost of the upcoming console given that AI is taking up a lot of the memory that the consoles require; that outlet speculates that this disc-free console could easily cost $1,000.
Keep scrolling for more great stories.