- Sony plans to stop producing physical discs by January 2026
- The announcement was met with an extremely negative reaction from many PlayStation fans.
- Many are worried about what this means for game ownership and the PS6 era.
Sony has announced plans to stop physical disc production by 2028, which would deal a major blow to the concept of game ownership, and the reaction from PlayStation fans appears to be overwhelmingly negative.
The company shared the explosive news in a PlayStation Blog post, and at the time of writing it had over 6,645 comments. The majority of responses call on Sony to reverse their decision and claim that they technically won’t own any digital games they purchase in January 2028.
“We literally only own Sony licenses anymore, it’s a horrible decision,” one user wrote, while another said, “I’ll be honest, I’ll stop buying games. I hope I’m not the only one seeing this trend between buying licenses and buying games and it’s disturbing that you agree with this. Or worse, many of us are convinced it’s okay.”
There are also concerns about the lack of options regarding purchasing used games in the future, as well as not being able to resell or trade their titles later.
Some fans are also considering abandoning the PS6 generation altogether if physical discs aren’t on the table, while others swear that the PS5 will be their last PlayStation console.
“Looks like this is where my journey with PlayStation ends, so, goodbye,” one fan commented.
“Well, if you want people to stop buying new gaming systems, that’s a choice I guess,” one commenter wrote. “But that means I’ll never buy another Playstation, because the way digital purchases are handled has shown me that it’s risky to pay a single penny for a digital game, because one glitch on Sony’s part can result in your account being banned and causing you to lose all the digital purchases you’ve made.”
Another said: “This is a terrible decision. As a long-time PlayStation customer, this will make me re-evaluate my choice of console for the next generation. Digital-only is not in the best interest of the consumer, and it’s something I’m not interested in.”
“This, combined with the decision to release a ‘PS6’ at a time when components are at record prices, makes this hobby unaffordable for many. You risk killing the industry with these short-sighted decisions rooted in greed.”
Following this announcement, analysts have determined that Sony’s decision indicates that the next-generation PS6 console will launch in late 2028 and will “at a minimum” not feature a disc drive, but that an additional disc drive could be available to play older PS4 and PS5 games.
It appears Microsoft is following a similar, all-digital business plan, as new reports claim the company is testing disc-to-digital functionality for existing consoles and could also launch a next-generation Project Helix console without a disc drive.
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