It’s official: PlayStation has returned to social media. Well, not the official Twitter account, but rather PlayStation Support US. After the company announced that it would no longer manufacture physical game discs after January 2028, the main account has effectively become a ghost town. No tweets, nothing. A peek at the support profile, which last told players that the PS5 Pro could enhance image quality on PS4 games and how it and the base console could capture gameplay, reveals exactly why.
PlayStation Plus cancellations. Pictures of physical game collections. Expletives. A modified version of PlayStation’s slogan to now say, “Play by our limits.” My favorite is probably the image from Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, except the “Colonel’s” dialogue to Raiden reads, “Corporations will abandon physical media, and the individual will own nothing at all.”
And on and on it goes for about 3,000 comments on one tweet.
If it wasn’t clear enough already, the decision to kill physical games has gone down poorly. Polls from different publications show that most readers are fine with the PS5 being their last console. A presidential candidate in France, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, lambasted Sony’s decision, stating that “video games are not mere merchandise, they are cultural assets, and the law in force must apply to them.”
Brazilian lawmaker Erika Hilton seeks to investigate Sony if it plans to announce digital-only titles and use them to push digital-only consoles. She also brought up a rather interesting issue in hindsight: how consumers paid more for consoles with disc drives, only to now be faced with a digital-only future. Remember when Sony was pushing for its optional Blu-ray disc drive? How it faced supply shortages and extensive scalping when the PS5 Pro was announced without one? Not even two years later, those who went to pains for the same have essentially been left high and dry.
But regardless, the result is clear: Most people utterly despise PlayStation’s decision. On the one hand, the direction is confusing – and we’ll get into that. On the other, it comes across as tone-deaf, especially with storage costs ever-increasing.
Of course, everyone knows why PlayStation is doing this, and it’s not just because the consumer base has trended more towards digital. This is also apparently far from a snap decision to help bring down the price of its next-gen console (especially because the real costs are tied elsewhere). But it all goes back to greed and the need to control its players’ purchasing power.
Remember that talking point from its last fiscal report about how 85 percent of its software sales for the quarter were full-game digital downloads? And how it was up by five percent year-over-year? When measuring the full-year ratio of downloads to physical sales, it actually turned out to be 78 percent. Furthermore, physical software revenue was actually up from 121.159 billion yen in fiscal year 2024 to 125.106 billion yen in fiscal year 2025 (though that also includes bundles and disc royalties from third parties).
There’s also that recent report by Alinea Analytics about physical sales splits for some of the top-selling PS5 games this year. Resident Evil Requiem reportedly sold 3.5 million copies on the platform, and about 27.8 percent is apparently physical. 007 First Light’s physical sales allegedly make up 21 percent of the two million sold on the platform. Ghost of Yōtei is perhaps the most egregious – a whopping 35.4 percent of the reported 1.2 million sold this year alone is physical.
Again, these are all estimates and not official data, but even if they’re off by five percent (give or take), there are still those out there buying discs in sizable enough quantities to justify their production. But in PlayStation’s eyes, all those physical copies simply represent a market ripe for resale, where they’re effectively cut out from any profits. This has long been a concern for the games industry for decades – who remembers the always-online DRM that Assassin’s Creed 2 had to combat piracy? So why is it taking such drastic steps? Games have become far more expensive and need to generate more sales to guarantee a return.
If Sony can dismantle the current ecosystem to funnel customers towards a digital-only future where it receives all the revenue, ownership be damned, it will go for it. It will even go a step further, as indicated by dynamic pricing on the PlayStation Store, to carefully control how much you save. Because everyone knows that those sales are meant to save the company money, not you. It’s even looking at potentially increasing the price of PlayStation Plus again in the future, presumably to spite all of you who played EA Sports FC 26 through your subscription.
To that end, Sony has also reportedly repurposed its disc manufacturing plant in Thalgau, which now plans to build microlenses instead. By 2028, it’s seemingly going from 300,000 discs daily to 30,000. It wouldn’t be surprising to see that volume drop even further, but if it wasn’t clear already, this has been a years-long plan. The fact that it’s finally set a deadline probably has less to do with the current memory and storage shortages, and more with trying to prop up the PS6 as its main digital tentpole.
How will this affect retailers? PlayStation said it would offer future titles in “digital formats only”…years after it announced it would no longer provide full games via digital codes for PS4. Obviously, this shouldn’t inspire much confidence in said retailers. But they’re effectively fighting to stay relevant, especially with the industry shifting more towards digital delivery, both in games and marketing.
How will it handle its partners and other publishers? Why, by allowing them to re-order discs for existing PlayStation titles after January 2028, according to a new report by Game File. That explains why it hasn’t completely shifted away from disc manufacturing. What about games launched after that date? What if you planned to release a game in Fall 2027 but another major release – say, The Witcher 4 – forces you to delay it to early 2028? Well, we don’t know, and at this point, it wouldn’t be surprising if PlayStation is similarly clueless.
All of this, every single bit, is the consequence of Sony being the market leader. It may dress up these decisions as adapting to “consumer trends” and aligning “more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today.” But these decisions, from start to finish, are all for PlayStation’s sake, and nothing more. And its shareholders, lest we forget. After all, the stock price rose by a whopping 3.2 percent after this announcement. Mission accomplished, clearly.
For everyone else who wants to feel a sense of ownership, or just to be assured that their platform holder can’t just take away things on short notice – like PlayStation’s recent announcement to remove more than 500 Studio Canal movies, with no avenue for current owners to access them – well, you can’t. Unlike the forced PSN account linking, this isn’t just something that it can back down from at the slightest hint of backlash. Even if it ultimately delivers a compromise – like special $100 discs for collectors – PlayStation will just keep on keeping on, slowly shifting towards a market that it fully controls. Like an amusement park where you’re welcome to buy a ticket and stay for as long as Sony dictates rather than a product that you own.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
