The argument for keeping physical discs in gaming has always rested on a few pillars: resale value, ownership, the secondhand market, and a general distrust of platforms that can revoke access with a policy change. Sony announced in July that it would stop manufacturing game discs from January 2028 — and the backlash was immediate. Now, speaking on the company’s latest earnings call, CFO Lin Tao has answered it.
Her position, in short: PlayStation doesn’t need discs to be different from PC. “Our strength is the curated contents, that’s one of our strengths. The game environment being stable, that’s another strength. Compared to the high-end gaming PC, our product is more affordable,” Tao said. “We don’t feel that the disc itself is a strong factor for differentiation. Going forward, we can coexist peacefully with PC games.”
What Sony Is Actually Cutting, and When
The disc production cut applies to all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles from January 2028 onwards. Games already released, or confirmed for physical release before that date, are unaffected. Players who want a physical edition of a new title from 2028 onwards will receive a box with a download code instead of a disc — the same arrangement that Grand Theft Auto 6 shipped with in some markets at launch.
Existing PlayStation 5 consoles with disc drives will still read the discs players already own. The change is forward-looking only: new games go digital, existing discs keep working. What it does strongly imply is that the PlayStation 6 will ship without a disc drive at all.
The Numbers Behind Sony’s Decision
Tao’s case for the move is rooted in data that is hard to argue with. When the PlayStation 4 launched in 2013, digital sales accounted for roughly 13% of Sony’s game revenue. By fiscal year 2025, that figure had risen to approximately 80%. The disc is not the product it was — it has been losing ground steadily for over a decade, and Sony’s sales data reflects that shift long before they announced ending production.
“It’s not just for PlayStation, but for all kinds of contents, digitalization is progressing, and so when we think about the future, we put in a lot of thought and time. We cautiously considered this, we came to this conclusion.” — Lin Tao, Sony CFO
Tao also stressed that the announcement has had no meaningful impact on the company’s business so far, and she doesn’t expect the actual end of disc production to change that significantly, precisely because most game sales are digital already.
Why the Backlash Isn’t Just Nostalgia
Tao acknowledged that Sony has heard from players who have “fond memories” tied to physical games and said “we understand those emotions.” But the pushback isn’t purely sentimental.
The concerns are practical. Without a disc, there is no secondhand market — you cannot sell a download code for half price three months after launch. There is no game preservation in the traditional sense — what happens when Sony decides to remove a title from the store, or when the PlayStation Store itself closes for an older platform? And there is the question of what you actually own: a licence to play a game on a platform, contingent on the platform staying online, is a different thing to a physical object that works regardless of server status.
The shift will also hit specialist games retailers and the secondhand market that supplies them, areas that Tao’s earnings call comments did not address directly. These are genuine downstream effects that Sony’s digital transition figures do not fully capture.
Key dates: Physical disc production ends January 2028 for all new PlayStation releases. Games confirmed for disc release before that date are unaffected. Existing discs continue to work on PS5 hardware.
A Digital-Only PlayStation 6 Is Effectively Confirmed
The original July announcement from Sony was framed around disc production, not console hardware. But analysts were quick to read between the lines: if Sony won’t manufacture game discs from 2028 onwards, there is very little commercial reason to build a disc drive into the PlayStation 6.
Daniel Ahmad of Niko Partners, a gaming market research firm, said the announcement “pretty much confirms PS6 will be digital only” — a view widely shared among industry observers. Tao’s earnings call comments do not directly contradict that, and her emphasis on PlayStation’s “curated” environment and affordability relative to high-end PCs suggests Sony sees its future identity as a software and service platform rather than a hardware differentiator.
Whether that’s an identity PlayStation fans are ready to embrace is a different question — and one the continuing debate around physical game releases suggests hasn’t been settled yet.
