A little over a year ago, I spoke on the then-state of the video games industry as it pertained to physical media, exploring the myriad of ways in which the likes of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have made a concerted effort to reduce the benefits of physical media in gaming. Cut to just one year later and it seems Sony has come up with a solution: Physical media cannot get worse if it no longer exists. Thus, the PlayStation maker recently announced that come January 2028, Sony will no longer be printing any games on discs – officially ushering in a new all-digital era. Whether this will prove to be a net positive to the company or not we will have to wait and see. From my perspective however, Sony has just severely shot itself in the disc.
As stated in a previous KitGuru Games, physical media in the video games space is no longer as seamless as it once was. While console hardware has improved, and discs have gotten more robust and data-dense, modern consoles require you to install the full game’s data onto your system’s SSD before being able to play.
Coupled with day-one patches, post-launch updates and a general desire to cut costs, we’ve seen the efficacy of discs fall drastically over the past generation or so – especially in the wake of both Sony and Microsoft’s move towards offering Digital Only consoles.
Despite this, physical media persisted. Be it due to convenience, the second hand market, the general sense of ownership or even just enjoying the process of unboxing a video game, consumers are not yet ready to say farewell to game discs. Unfortunately, soon we won’t be offered any choice, with Sony taking to its PlayStation Blog recently to announce:
“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,” adding that “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.”
This of course is a rather disingenuous statement. While yes, factually, more people are buying games digitally when compared to physical, this is due in part to the fact that these console makers have made physical gaming worse over time (as I explored in the aforementioned KitGuru Games) – making this more of a self-fulfilling prophecy than anything else; a prophecy written by PlayStation itself.
In a moment of extreme irony, the announcement that Sony would no longer be printing discs came at the exact same time that the console maker revealed that their PlayStation 3 and Vita digital storefronts would be shutting down entirely.
Now, luckily, a majority of games from the 7th-gen era were released physically and so they have been preserved in some ways. That said, it is not lost on me the fact that Sony showed us exactly why we need physical games at the very same time that they announced they would be ceasing the practice.
PlayStation has had a long legacy, one which is built on decades of midnight launches, multiple different iterations of video game mediums – and arguably only wound up becoming as successful as they did thanks to the explosive popularity of the PlayStation 2 (whose primary selling point was that it could play DVDs).
In many ways, Sony has always helped to push the physical medium forward. From its early Walkman days to the PlayStation, hardware; software and media have always been inextricably tied to one another.
The PlayStation 1 helped to usher in the rise of CDs instead of cartridges. The PS2 arguably became the world’s most successful DVD player. The PlayStation 3 introduced us to the concept of Blu Ray discs – being more data-dense and scratch resistant when compared to prior offerings. Even the PlayStation 5 brought in support for 4K Blu Ray (admittedly during a time in which film and TV streaming had become the new norm). All this is without mentioning Sony’s portable systems, each of which – for better or for worse – were accompanied with new and bespoke disc / cartridge solutions.
Whether they realised it or not, PlayStation and physical media go hand-in-hand in many people’s eyes. One needs to look no further than the immense backlash to the all-digital announcement, where-in PlayStation fans from across all aspects of life have come to express their grievances at this impending timeline. According to reports, many game publishers themselves were left out of the loop, with the announcement taking all by surprise. Of course, regardless of all other factors, the reason for getting rid of discs is a monetary one.
The question that remains now is whether the boost in potential profits by going all-digital will be enough to counter the outcry from fans. On a base level, we have seen an immediate and visceral amount of backlash, with many life-long PlayStation players claiming that they will not be purchasing a PlayStation 6 should it not feature a disc drive.
According to a poll conducted by IGN, across 13,000 participants over 90% said they do not support an all-digital future. Another poll indicated that just 23% of enthusiasts plan to stick with PlayStation moving forward to the next generation.
The announcement also added fuel to the fire of Sony’s various anti-trust lawsuits, with the Dutch consumer group Stichting Massaschade & Consument claiming that the removal of discs means that they can no longer hide behind physical media as a defense for their digital practices.
The fallout does not stop there however. Sony has had to limit the number of PS5 disc drives being sold to 1 per customer as a result of “high demand” in the wake of their announcement. The console maker also went on a bout of silence following the revelation, shying away from social media. This did not seem to help, with various indie devs revealing that their game announcements had been flooded with comments for Sony to reverse course on their disc decision.
Last but certainly not least, in a moment of extreme sadness and irony, the comment section from Sony’s iconic 2013 YouTube video – in which they advertised the fact that you can share you PS4 games with a friend just by lending them the disc physically – has been inundated with comments from fans expressing their disappointment at the timeline which we have found ourselves in.
Alas, despite the vocal and continued outcry it seems as though Sony has no intentions to reverse-course. As mentioned, we’ve seen discs being slowly but surely pushed out over the past couple generations, meaning that even if they were to have a change of heart, the situation would not get much better.
First they got rid of game manuals, then they made installing discs a pain, and finally, they are robbing you of the physical disc itself. We are about to enter a whole new era for the video games industry – one which I am unfortunately not looking forward to.
KitGuru says: What do you think of Sony’s decision to get rid of all physical media? Is there even a 1% chance that they might change their minds with enough pressure? Is this a turning point for the industry? Let us know down below.
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KitGuru Games: PlayStation Has Shot Itself In The DISC first appeared on
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