Sony is pulling the plug on physical PlayStation game discs. Starting in January 2028, every new PlayStation game will be sold only in digital form, either through the PlayStation Store or as digital purchases through retailers.
Anything released before that cutoff will still be available on disc as usual, so existing collections and current releases aren’t affected.
The announcement came today on the PlayStation Blog from Sid Shuman, a senior director at Sony Interactive Entertainment.
The reasoning boils down to where sales already are: physical software made up only about 3% of PlayStation’s total sales in 2024, according to Sony’s own numbers.
Digital downloads already account for roughly 80% of PlayStation software sales, and the figure is even higher on Xbox, around 90%.
The timing isn’t a coincidence, either. Just days earlier, Rockstar Games stirred up controversy by revealing that Grand Theft Auto VI’s physical edition won’t actually contain a disc with the game on it, just a box with a download code inside.
Fans weren’t thrilled, and Sony’s move suggests that kind of packaging trick may soon be unnecessary because there won’t be a disc option to begin with.
Rising hardware costs are pushing things in the same direction. A PlayStation 5 with a disc drive currently starts at $649.99, and Microsoft’s Xbox is expected to hit $799.99 for a model with an optical drive.
Digital-only consoles are cheaper, and that price gap is nudging more buyers away from discs regardless of what Sony does.
Retail is feeling the shift too. GameStop has closed more than 1,300 stores over the past two fiscal years, and publishers are seeing similar trends. Capcom reported that 93% of its game sales are now digital, with that number expected to climb to 94.5% this year.
There’s some irony in all this, since PlayStation is largely the console that made discs the standard in the first place.
When it launched in 1994, it helped shift the industry away from cartridges, setting off decades of disc-based competition with Xbox while Nintendo stuck with cartridges longer than most. Now PlayStation is closing that chapter itself.
Sony hasn’t said whether physical retail will disappear entirely or whether stores will still sell boxes containing download codes, similar to what Rockstar is doing with GTA 6.
The company has also announced it’s ending PlayStation Store support for the PS3 and PS Vita, adding to a broader pullback from older physical and legacy systems.
For collectors and preservationists, the countdown has begun. Physical PlayStation game production has about a year and a half left before it stops for good, and once games go digital-only, players will be depending entirely on continued access to their accounts and Sony’s servers to keep playing them.
