Owners of a PlayStation are about to find new games might get a little more costly, as Sony makes a move to cut the optical disc drive out of the equation.
In a move that’s largely unprecedented for the TV-connected consoles, Sony will take its PlayStation to a land where you can only find games in digital, and only buy them from the Sony online store.
It’s distinct to making a digital-only console and a version supporting Blu-ray optical media, which Sony has done for a number of years.
These days, you can only buy the digital disc-free model, and one that has seen its price rise since the good ol’ days from before consoles were pushed right to the thousand dollar mark, something you can likely thank AI for as well as those tariffs that added to the costs, too. There is an optional Blu-ray disc drive as an extra, but from next year onwards, it will largely be there for movies and movies alone, as Sony makes the change.
From January 2028, Sony will stop producing and releasing games on discs, a move the company says corresponds to trends.
“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,” said Sid Shuman, Senior Director for Sony Interactive Entertainment Content Communications, writing on the PlayStation blog.
“This transition will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today,” he said.
While it is definitely possible that it is a trend, it’s also thoroughly possible that Sony’s shift also reflects a change in how the company can continue to make money from titles on its consoles.
Digital marketplaces for the big consoles rarely offer the sort of sale-driven regularity gamers can find for PC gaming, such as with Valve’s Steam and with the Epic online games store equivalent. It’s no wonder so many of us have game libraries just itching to be played on a digital-only portable like the Steam Deck or another portable PC like those from Asus.
Over in console gaming, sales are less regular, and fans keen to save a few quid need to turn to sales of disc media in retail stores, as well as the massive second-hand market.
For instance, there’s a good ten dollar difference between new titles and pre-owned in stores, and that’s before you find your way to the marketplaces of social and the like. Meanwhile toy and game sales can also see price drops at times when the official outlets aren’t bothering to do so.
But a shift to Sony being the only digital store you can buy games from effectively puts a stop to both, and gives you one source, the publisher making the console, allowing them to lock prices where they want, and then withdraw games at times, delisting and deleting them from your library.
The other angle is locking games to digital only can help shift the narrative to game store subscription models. While both can feel like you don’t own a single thing (because the publisher can delete them from your library and effectively remove your ability to play them), the subscription model more accurately reflects that. And like with other subscriptions, it can be difficult to remove them from your life once they’re in place.
Granted, the January 2028 change means there’s still a good year or so of disc-based released, but with GTA VI set to launch without a disc, the momentum has clearly started for publishers to move to a mostly disc-less world.
