Sony to end releasing PlayStation games on disc, earning ire from gamers despite market shift to digital

Sony will stop producing discs for physical copies of all new PlayStation video games beginning in 2028, the company announced Wednesday, citing customers' growing preference to buy and download games online.

But the announcement drew ire from gamers concerned they will no longer truly own their collections.

In a post on the PlayStation Blog, Sony communications director Sid Shuman said that "physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting January 2028."

After that, PlayStation games will be available only through the online PlayStation Store, while retail copies sold in stores will be offered "in digital formats only." Games already released or scheduled to launch with a retail version will still be available on discs.

"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," Shuman wrote.

The same day, Sony announced it will shut down the online stores for its older PlayStation 3 home console and the PS Vita handheld in select markets this year before expanding the closures globally in 2027.

The company said the older devices, launched in 2006 and 2011 respectively, are incompatible with "modern commerce systems, including updated payment processing standards."

WATCH | Sony raises console prices:

This month, Sony raised the prices of its PS5 consoles around the world. In Canada, the standard PS5 now costs $819.99. That’s almost $200 more than its previous price of $649.99. The reason for the change? Sony says it’s the rising cost of the console’s components, such as RAM. CBC Kids News hit the streets to ask kids in Vancouver, British Columbia, how they feel about this new price hike.

The announcement last week that the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI will launch with a download code instead of a disc in physical releases.

Sony, along with Philips, co-developed the compact disc format and brought CD-based video games to the mainstream in the 1990s with the first PlayStation console.

It's been many years since everyone had to insert a large, grey plastic cartridge into a Nintendo Entertainment System to play video games in front of the TV. Over time, more people have been buying and downloading games online rather than in stores like EB Games or Best Buy.

Daniel Ahmad, a games market analyst at Niko Partners, told CBC News that 78 per cent of Sony's "full game unit sales" this past year were digital. Xbox's digital sales over the same time period were 90 per cent, he said.

That still means 70 million physical PlayStation games were sold last year, Ahmad said. He also noted that Nintendo, whose Switch games are sold on physical game cards similar to SD cards, "still has a strong retail presence."

Mat Piscatella, a U.S.-based games industry analyst, says sales of new physical games in the U.S. totalled $1.6 billion US during the 12-month period ending in May 2025, compared with $11.5 billion in 2009.

Piscatella also says the renewed popularity of other forms of physical media, such as vinyl records, is unlikely to be replicated in gaming, especially because many popular versions of modern consoles don't have disc drives.

"Any company can manufacture a turntable or CD player. But the console manufacturers decide exactly what components are included in a console and can dictate what peripherals may be used with a console," he told CBC News.

Gamers reacted loudly and in large numbers at Sony's announcement, flooding several of the company's social media accounts with negative comments. Several called the decision "terrible," while others vowed to stop buying PlayStation games or hardware.

Developers and others in the gaming industry had strong reactions as well.

Iam8bit, which produces special editions of classic games, said it was "profoundly disappointed" by the decision.

"Physical games are vital to games preservation, ownership and consumer choice," the company said on social media.

"My heart sunk, both as a player and as a developer," Toronto-based independent game creator Benjamin Rivers said after hearing the news.

Rivers says a physical release for a game — for which a disc has historically been a given — can provide an especially useful revenue boost for smaller creators because download-only games can easily get lost in the sea of thousands of titles on a digital storefront.

"Even if your game kind of flies under the radar or isn't like a million seller, getting a physical release can ... get eyeballs on something that people might have just missed the first time around," he said.

Ahmad said Sony's announcement "guarantees" that the as-yet unannounced PlayStation 6 console will ship without a disc drive because "Sony is embracing an all-digital future."

But he also noted that the move is not simply a response to consumer decisions.

"The decision to stop physical disc production at this point is entirely a platform-led decision that is designed to cut costs for Sony, eliminate resale [and] used markets, and drive 100 per cent of revenue through the PlayStation Store."

Rivers, who has a room in his home dedicated entirely to retro games, looks back fondly on a time when physical copies of games were often much more substantial products. They could include lengthy instruction manuals with additional story material, slipcovers with exclusive artwork or maps of the game world.

"That's the biggest thing that I think we're going to lose, is the cultural and artistic artifact [of a video game] can't just be a digital download," he said.

"It's not as memorable versus that thing that you had on a shelf, that you've looked at every day for years, because you bought it and you loved it."