PlayStation to stop releasing games on physical disc from January 2028

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PlayStation has today announced that no new PlayStation games will be released on physical disc from January 2028 onwards.

In a huge blow to the concept of physical ownership, the gaming giant has said this move is "a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs" in a new PS blog post .

It goes on to argue that, "This transition will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today."

The move is unlikely to be popular with fans and particularly with game collectors, and comes just days after the disc-less GTA 6 pre-orders, which saw Rockstar ditch the disc in favour of code-in-a-box game box releases.

Not only this, but this decision also comes a matter of days after PlayStation removed some movies that console owners had bought digitally from their libraries with no compensation.

It all points to a digital-only future, with a physical disc drive only being useful for games released before January 2028 on PlayStation. Sony's next PlayStation console being digital only by default now seems very likely.

It's a far cry from Sony's famous dunk on the PS4's competitor, the Xbox One, at the beginning of the last console generation, when the latter appeared to be announced with a function that would block resale and sharing of physical games. Microsoft quickly rowed that back.

The under-30-second video clip published by PlayStation has been viewed millions of times and is part of a series of famous 'wins' for PlayStation's console over Microsoft's back in 2013 that set the scene for that generation — and beyond — and is part of gaming folklore.

Now, however, it's all changed. This decision will further bring the concept of owning one's own games under scrutiny when publishers and platform holders will simply retain the right and ability to pull the plug at will, with consumers not necessarily owning a copy of the game they bought.