The industry is still reeling from Sony’s announcement that as of 2028, physical discs for new PlayStation games will be dead, ushering in an all-digital future. It is the endpoint of something that has been building for two console generations now, though pushback led some early proponents, like Microsoft, to scale back its plans to make discs irrelevant in the Xbox One era. Now? It’s over.
There is no stopping PlayStation this time, and in turn, probably no stopping Xbox either. In Sony’s case, I noted yesterday that this was the angriest fans have been about a decision the console manufacturer has made in 20 years, all the way back to the absurdly high PS3 price announcement. But it may even be more significant than that as…this is sticking. It’s a done deal, and is a sea change for the entire industry.
In the past, these Sony controversies were in fact dictated by fan anger in the end. The comically high $600 PS3 price was reduced to $500 not that long after, then $400 and eventually $300 as the generation progressed.
Then there was crossplay, which Sony blockaded until the tide became overwhelming and they simply had to agree to it. In 2024, it announced it would require PC players to link Steam accounts to PSN accounts, a policy that made players furious, and it was reversed in days.
There is no recourse for the disc-killing decision, even as fans are now louder than ever, drowning Sony in social media lambasting, with the larger media ecosystem amplifying concerns about ownership, preservation, and the lack of consumer choice that benefits Sony and only takes away from gamers.
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This is not some impulsive decision. Sony is reportedly already re-tasking at least one disc-making factory to convert to making other components for the company, such as optical microlenses. It will ensure there are no or minimal layoffs, as workers simply transition to something else. Sony will not kill these plans when something of this scale has already been in motion.
Then there’s the PS6, which has been in development for years, with an all-digital future no doubt already in mind. While nothing has been publicly announced about the PS6 other than the fact that yes, it exists, the plan appears to be that it would not arrive until at least 2028, when this policy is already implemented. The end result here would be a unified SKU, and if there were multiple SKUs at launch, it could be based on storage rather than the disc-and-digital models we’ve seen. The assumption is that something like a disc drive could be sold as an add-on rather than as part of any one model, but at this point it may not be safe to assume anything.
This is one moment where gamers will not win, similar to what we saw when almost the entire industry agree to raise baseline game prices to $70, and everyone just had to deal with it. Related to that, the obvious cost savings from no physical production and no retailer cut give Sony/Microsoft a bigger piece of the pie, with zero savings passed to the consumer. And with GTA 6 launching at $80, there’s no guaranteeing that doesn’t become the standard going forward soon.
Players are absolutely free to protest this and abandon PlayStation, but if the idea is to flee over to Xbox in the next generation, they may find themselves in the exact same situation. The corporations want to move on, and players will be forcibly dragged kicking and screaming into this unfriendly future.
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