Sony is reportedly doing something it almost certainly would prefer to keep quiet: asking the very developers it told to stay silent whether they think the death of physical discs is actually a problem.
The revelation comes from tech analyst and content creator Moore’s Law Is Dead — known online as Tom — who detailed the situation on his Broken Silicon podcast, citing multiple developer contacts. It is the latest chapter in a months-long controversy that has shown no signs of quieting down, and the survey’s sheer scale suggests the company is paying closer attention to the noise than its public statements would indicate.
A Survey Bigger Than Anything Sony Has Sent Before
According to Tom, Sony distributed one of the most extensive surveys it has ever sent to game developers — possibly the largest in the company’s history. Buried within it was a question carefully dancing around the central controversy: is there an issue with how PlayStation is handling physical game sales?
“There is a survey Sony sent out to developers that is, what I was told by my contacts, a bigger survey than they’ve sent almost ever before, if not ever before. There was a question in it trying to ask in a not-direct way, ‘Is there an issue with how we sell games physically?’ — asking developers for feedback on killing discs.” — Moore’s Law Is Dead
The timing is pointed. Sony announced in July that new PlayStation titles would stop receiving physical disc releases from January 2028 onwards. The backlash was immediate and sustained — more than 200,000 people signed a protest petition, and every PlayStation social media post since has attracted a flood of angry comments that shows no sign of abating.
Developers Were Silenced First — Now Sony Wants Their Feedback
The awkwardness of this situation is difficult to ignore. Earlier reports suggested Sony had issued strict social media guidelines to first-party studio staff ahead of the disc announcement — a move that, according to former Santa Monica Studio writer Alanah Pearce, showed the company knew it would be “an enormous PR issue.” Now, months later, it is apparently circling back to those same studios asking for their honest assessment.
The developer displeasure is not purely private, either. Digital Foundry’s John Linneman reported from Gamescom that multiple studios were openly venting frustration at Sony’s direction. That visible discontent, combined with Tom’s account of the survey, paints a picture of a publisher that silenced its partners publicly while privately needing to understand how badly relations have been damaged.
Discs still sell: Marvel’s Wolverine continues to shift significant physical copies — a fact cited in discussions as evidence that disc demand remains commercially meaningful, directly undercutting the case that the format is already fading on its own.
Tom speculated that if developer feedback came back strongly enough, Sony might consider “some sort of mea culpa.” He was careful to frame this as conjecture, not confirmation of any reversal — Sony has given no public indication it is reconsidering.
The Financial Case Against Reversing Course
Sony’s reasons for going digital-only are not hard to follow. According to research from Niko Partners, PlayStation has generated 59% more revenue per user compared to the PS4 generation — a figure that reflects how much more profitable the direct digital model can be when physical retail middlemen are removed from the equation.
There is also a structural advantage Sony would be giving up. Unlike Xbox, PlayStation does not licence its disc-pressing technology to third-party publishers. Every physical release on PlayStation is one Sony must co-ordinate and fund. Digital sales cut that overhead entirely and hand the platform owner tighter control over distribution and pricing.
CFO Lin Tao confirmed as recently as this summer that Sony would “cautiously move forward” with the January 2028 cutoff despite the backlash. Production of discs for games released before that deadline continues, though volumes are being wound down by around 10%.
What Buyers Can Expect After January 2028
From that date, new PlayStation titles will be available either digitally or as a “code in a box” — a retail-packaged product containing a download code rather than a disc. For consumers who trade in games, lend them to friends, or simply value the sense of ownership that comes with physical media, the distinction is a significant one.
Sony has also started applying warning stickers to PS5 boxes alerting buyers to the upcoming change. The move reads less like genuine communication and more like legal cover for a decision the company has no intention of walking back.
Whether the developer survey amounts to anything beyond routine data collection remains to be seen. The 200,000-signature petition has not shifted Sony’s public stance an inch, and its CFO has been unambiguous. But the reported scale of this survey — and the pointed nature of the question inside it — suggests that at least someone within PlayStation is tracking exactly how much goodwill the company is burning through on the way to 2028.
