It may have come as a shock to many people. Earlier this month, in a brief post on their website, Sony announced its intention to kill physical media in 2028.
“Physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting January 2028”, said the Japanese company on the PlayStation Blog. “Following this date, new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only”, added Sony.
Shocking, granted, but gamers shouldn’t be surprised. This is because the writing had been on the wall for a long time.
Actually, going back to the PS5’s launch in 2020, players got a pretty big hint that Sony was starting to look forward to a digital future. Besides launching a PS5 console with a disc drive, there was also a cheaper, digital-only version of the console on offer too… And the company repeated the same move later in 2027 with the PS5 Slim, but this time the digital version of the PS5 could be fitted with a Blu-ray drive as well. Granted, the disc version of these consoles sold the most by far in the end, but this was a warning of Sony’s plan nonetheless.
Then came the PS5 Pro in late 2024, a console retailing for $700 US dollars, but which did not come with a disc drive. One could be added via a modular attachment as is the case with the digital version of the PS5 Slim, but the lack of a disc drive still left many gamers scratching their heads… Nonetheless, it was still a pretty big clue about Sony’s plans, even if most gamers were still unaware of the all-digital future Sony had envisioned for PlayStation.
Because the truth is that digital sales had been trending higher for a long while now, as one video game analyst has pointed out on X (via GameSpot). Back in 2015, the percentage of PlayStation games bought digitally was only 19 %, surpassed 50 % in 2019, and now it is about 80 % as analyst Daniel Ahmad points out. And while about 70 million PlayStation discs were sold in 2025, this is much less than the number Sony dispatched in 2018 (a whopping 166 million). So those trends pointed to a digital-only future on PlayStation’s horizon too.
It’s no secret that digital captures a higher % of full game sales each year (no, this figure doesn’t include DLC).
What started during the PS4 (less than 10% digital at the start), has evolved into 80% of full game sales being digital on an annual basis. pic.twitter.com/fn2bpDo5sB
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) July 1, 2026
This could be seen last year too, as a major PlayStation 5 exclusive like Ghost of Yotei, despite selling strongly, shifted 40 % less physical copies than its predecessor Ghost of Tsushima. It more than made up for this with digital sales on the PlayStation Store, of course, this highlighting the shift to digital on the part of gamers worldwide.
And Rockstar had previously announced its intention of not shipping a physical version of the most eagerly anticipated game of all time Grand Theft Auto 6…
So why all the outrage?
This probably has to do with the removal of choice than anything else – PlayStation fans have been able to get their games on disc since the PS1 came out in 1994, and won’t be able to do so from January 2028 for new releases. Also, there’s the fact disc-based games come in their cases and you feel like you actually own the game, not just a “license to play” which Sony could in theory revoke in the future. Gamers can buy discounted physical games on Amazon and other places even when pre-ordering new games and not just after the game had been selling for a while…
And, of course, there’s sharing too. Physical games are easy to share with friends and family, and it’s something that’s always been part of the console experience, but now that’s been taken away by Sony. In all fairness, the Japanese company does provide a way to share your digital library with another person on a different console, but it’s not exactly ideal.
And let’s not forget the ability of sharing physical games easily was a major selling point for the PS4 back in 2013. Sony’s iconic “this is how you share your games on PS4” gave it a huge early advantage over Microsoft’s Xbox One, leading to the PS5’s dominant position today. “We tried to communicate what we were going to do in a very short form”, said Sony executive Shuhei Yoshida, who appears in the video below. Back then, though, less than 10 % of games sales were digital, while nowadays this is closer to 80 % as stated earlier.
This is something Sony pointed out to justify its decision in its PlayStation Blog post.
“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”, said Sony.
Physical PlayStation games will be a thing of the past in the future then, as it’s extremely unlikely Sony will change its mind. They knew gamer outrage and a backlash would follow their decision, even if as mentioned earlier this is something gamers shouldn’t be surprised at. A digital-only future for PlayStation had been on the cards for a long while, and sadly for some, is now an inevitability.
PS5 Pro console (Sony Interactive Entertainment)