PlayStation manufacturer Sony announced the company would no longer release new games on physical discs starting in January 2028, shifting all sales to digital platforms in an effort to “adapt to consumer trends,” marking the end of a physical media era for one of the bestselling game console manufacturers.
The company said this change would not impact games that were already released.
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Key Facts
- In a blog post published on Wednesday, Sony’s senior director Sid Shuman said the move will “align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today.”
- Physical sales of new games have been falling in recent years—physical software made up only 3% of Sony’s revenue in 2024, according to the company’s 2025 corporate report.
- The news comes days after Rockstar began preorders for their highly anticipated “Grand Theft Auto VI,” which is currently slated for release in November without a physical disc inside its physical release.
- Sony said the shift to digital sales will not impact older games already released, or upcoming games being released before January 2028.
Analysts Predict ‘Watershed Moment’ For Games Industry
Piers Harding-Rolls, an analyst at Ampere Analysis, called Sony’s announcement a “watershed moment” for the industry in a post on social media. According to Ampere’s data, Sony’s sales of digital games have replaced their sales for physical games. In 2013, digital sales made up only 13% of the company’s full game sales. But 12 years later this trend was reversed—digital sales made up 80% of all full games Sony sold last year, according to the firm’s data. Harding-Rolls later predicted Sony’s upcoming PlayStation 6 console, which does not have an official release date yet, will not include a physical disc drive on its standard version. In response to the news, Mat Piscatella, a games industry analyst at Circana, said in a Bluesky post “physical video games will last only as long as the console manufacturers allow them to.” Piscatella linked to data from his own firm that found consumers spent $1.6 billion on new physical games in the last 12-month period ending in May—down from a peak of $11.5 billion in 2009.
Tangent
The news did not immediately impact GameStop stock price after markets opened on Wednesday morning. In March, GameStop reported a 14% revenue drop in its most recent fourth quarter as consumers migrated to digital downloads for games.
