- PlayStation has announced that it will not release games on physical discs from January 2028
- This comes days after GTA 6 pre-orders were digital or code-in-a-box orders only.
- The decision appears to pave the way for a digital-only PS6, which will likely launch between 20-28 at the earliest.
PlayStation announced today that no new PlayStation games will be released on physical disc starting in January 2028.
In a blow to the concept of physical ownership, the gaming giant has said that this move is “a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the overall preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs” in a new PS blog post.
He goes on to argue that “this transition will allow us to more closely align with how the majority of our community prefers to access and play games today.”
The move is unlikely to be popular with fans and particularly game collectors, and comes just days after the discless version. GTA 6 pre-orders, in which Rockstar abandoned the disc in favor of code-in-a-box game box releases.
Not only this, but this decision also comes a few days after PlayStation removed some movies that console owners had purchased digitally from their libraries without compensation.
Everything points to an exclusively digital future, in which a physical disk drive will only be useful for games released before January 2028 on PlayStation. It now seems very likely that Sony’s next PlayStation console will be digital-only by default.
It’s a far cry from Sony’s famous dunk on PS4 competitor the Xbox One at the start of the last console generation, when the latter appeared to be announced with a feature that would block reselling and trading of physical games. Microsoft quickly remedied that.
The sub-30-second video clip released by PlayStation has been viewed millions of times and is part of a series of famous PlayStation console ‘victories’ over Microsoft’s in 2013 that set the stage for that generation (and beyond) and is part of gaming folklore.
Now, however, everything has changed. This decision will further put the concept of owning your own games under scrutiny when publishers and platform owners will simply retain the right and ability to disconnect at will, and consumers will not necessarily own a copy of the game they purchased.
What do you think of Sony’s decision to no longer release PlayStation games on physical discs starting in 2028? Vote in the poll below or leave a comment.
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