Sony to end Playstation disc production from January 2028

[NateDog]

https://blog.playstation.com/2026/07/01/...-consoles/

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.  Following this date, new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only. This transition has no impact on games that already released, or will be releasing, prior to January 2028 in disc format.  

I knew GTAVI's digital-only release would accelerate the oncoming of the end of the physical gaming market, but even I didn't expect to see something like this confirmed so soon. A very dark day for gaming (and in general, media) preservation. That may see me done with consoles apart from Nintendo. My brother in law could only play Resident Evil Requiem and Lego Batman because I loaned him my copies, I could only buy Pokopia because I sold my copy of Mario Tennis. I'm not going to be playing much in a world of €80+ games with little to no discounts available and no recourse to moving something on if it doesn't gel with my group or if I'm finished with it and know I won't return. Fuck this and fuck Sony.

[black king]

I'm sure they'll pass on the savings to the consumer!

Yeah this isn't great. If you lose your account through bans, hacks, etc you now lose your gaming collection. Combine that with games heading towards $80 and consoles trending closer to 4 digits than not...

Hopefully Xbox doesn't follow suit.

[Shyne-Bryght]

Valve must be so confused watching competitors continue to shoot themselves in the foot.

[Wayno]

Hopefully Xbox doesn't follow suit.

Talk going around that their next console will follow suit.

I think I'm done with consoles at this point.

[Dirty Duck]

[Roger]

I find it completely ridiculous that they're doing this. They'll take loses on console sales, but the used game market is too much of a potential lost? With this regard, they should make online free again as an attempt of any form of goodwill. Unfortunately, the masses will eat the slop and continue on without thinking twice about this.

[Dirty Duck]

The thing that I'm wondering about besides the immediately bullshit way this executes the used games market is:
if they're not selling physical games why would they bother putting a disc drive on the PS6? And if there's no disc drive on the PS6 are they going to come up with a way for us to carry across our PS4 and PS5 collections that only exist as discs or are those collections going to become useless? Do we have to keep our PS5 just to maintain access to our old games, meaning people that sell their old consoles to fund buying the new one are going to have to choose between the next generation of gaming and all the games they're amassed since 2013?

This is so anti-consumer it's baffling. I can't believe it's only taken Sony two console generations to fall so far from this: