In a bombshell of an announcement, PlayStation announced its plans to discontinue producing discs for all games on “PlayStation consoles” starting January 2028.
Games released in January 2028 for PlayStation will completely be digital releases only.
Games to be released before January 2028 will not be impacted. So are games that are already available today. But there will be no new PS5, PS4 discs beyond January 2028.
This also implies that the next-generation to succeed the PS5, presumably be called the PS6, will be an all-digital console.
PlayStation describes this as “a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs.”
GTA VI launching without a disc for its “physical copy” (it’s just a box with a download code) was not much a power play by an established publisher that can do such a thing, but a sign of an all-digital future.
It is noted that the PC has basically gone fully digital thanks to digital games distribution platforms such as Steam. Publishers have regularly skip physical releases for Xbox titles in Southeast Asia, though that’s more due to the little-to-no presence of Microsoft’s console in the market. Nintendo are still doing physical cartridges for the Switch 2, though there are now Game Key Cards where the physical cartridge does not include the game itself, but rather a transferable key to download a digital copy of the game.
All games sales have always been reported with the combined sum of physical and digital sales. As PlayStation says that “general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs,” consumers never really seen the stats of a waning support for physical media. But it looks like it has reach to a point that PlayStation can afford to abandon discs altogether.
With the revised “slim” versions of the PS5 and PS5 Pro, PlayStation made disc readers an option, rendering them digital-only console by default. And this is the natural conclusion to decision to move away from physical media.
PlayStation’s move to go all-digital will mean the publisher will now be more than ever must ensure that the PlayStation Store must always be available for the foreseeable future so that customers won’t lose access to their digital licenses.
The irony of it, is that PlayStation also announced that it will be closing the PS3 and PS Vita versions of the PlayStation Store in the same announcement page, this time for real, in July 2027. Pray that there won’t be an announcement similar to this for the current PS4 and PS5 PlayStation Store.