By Dor Zairi
On July 1, 2026, Sony confirmed what the industry had expected for years: starting January 2028, it stops pressing discs for new PlayStation games. Titles already out, or shipping before that date, keep their physical editions. Everything after is download-only.
The company framed it as following its customers rather than pushing them. Digital made up roughly four of every five full-game purchases on PS4 and PS5 last year, and physical was about 3% of PlayStation's revenue in 2024, under a billion dollars against a business measured in tens of billions. Keeping disc plants and replication contracts running for that shrinking slice is hard to justify on a spreadsheet.
The move has been arriving in slow motion. The PS5 already sells in a disc-less Digital Edition. Sony capped disc production in early 2025, and one of its European plants is retraining staff off discs entirely. Most analysts expect the next console, likely after 2028, to shipower price for it. This isn't a switch beingflipped. It's the last step of a transition that's already most of the way done.
What's lost isn't nothing. A disc is something you own outright. You can lend it or sell it, and it still works a decade later when the store that sold you the download is gone. A digital license is permission, and permission can be revoked. Sony handed critics a live example this year when it pulled purchased movies from some UK accounts over a licensing dispute. Preservationists raise a longer worry: when a game leaves the store and no disc exists, it can stop
being available to anyone. Sony still sold aear, so the people who care haven't goneanywhere.
There's a sharper irony for anyone who followed the last console war. In 2013, Microsoft unveiled an Xbox One that phoned home every 24 hours and pushed used-game sales through approved retailers. Sony answered with a 22-second video: one employee hands a disc to another,share games on PlayStation. It went viral,humiliated Microsoft, and forced a reversal inside a week. That clip is going around again now, because the digital-only, resale-limited world Sony mocked is close to the one it's building.
The difference is timing. 2013 tried to force the shift before players wanted it. 2026 is signing off on a change players already made on their own. Conveniensc's retirement actually decides is who endsup holding what you paid for, and whether some of these games survive once the last drive stops spinning.
Tags: sony, disk, news, opinion