Sony Is Ending Physical Discs For New PlayStation Games

Lee Murray
Jul 19, 2026
3 min read
News

The white PlayStation logo on a black background, from Sony's announcement about ending physical disc production.

I was surprised to see this one, maybe sad is a more appropriate word. Sony have confirmed that from January 2028 they will stop producing physical discs for new PlayStation games, and new releases from that date will be digital only.

First, some clarity, as I've read a few posts that weren't accurate. This will not affect the physical games you already have. All the discs in your collection will continue to work absolutely fine, as will any other games that were released on disc before January 2028 (which is quite a few!).

What is ending is any new physical disc in a case. Boxed games sold offline and online will stop, though Sony say the games will still be sold in shops, just in digital form. In practice that probably means a download code in a box rather than a disc you can hold, though they haven't spelled out exactly how that will work.

The reasoning is the one you would expect. Most people buy digitally now, and Sony are following the money. Fair enough, in a way. But it is hard not to feel that something is being quietly lost.

A boxed physical copy of WipEout 2097 for the original PlayStation, sitting on a wooden table.

What you lose

The nice thing about a disc, or a cartridge, is that it is yours. You can lend it to a mate, sell it when you're done, pick it up second-hand for a few quid, or leave it on a shelf for twenty years and blow the dust off.

A download code is a licence, and a licence can be taken away. Sony gave everyone a taste of that not that long ago, when a licensing deal lapsed and hundreds of films were pulled from people's libraries. Even Hideo Kojima, about as inside the industry as a person can be, told the Guardian he was "very sad about it, because I grew up with physical media."

Three Evercade cartridges laid out on a worktop, the kind of physical media you genuinely own.

A win for Retro Gaming?

Looking at the positives, the more new releases drift into rented, digital-only territory, the more the old stuff on our shelves is worth.

A cartridge cannot be switched off from head office. A PS1 disc will play whether or not a shop still exists to sell it. The retro shelf was always about the love of the thing. Now it's the safer bet as well.

So yeah, I will defo miss buying new games on disc. But if this nudges a few more people towards the simple joy of owning what they play, of a library that is genuinely theirs, then it is not all bad news, and Retro Gaming might grow even more.

The good folk at Retro Dodo made much the same point, and I think they're spot on. When everything else becomes a stream, the things you can actually hold start to look like treasure.

You can read Sony's own announcement on the PlayStation Blog, and the BBC has a good rundown of the reaction.

The shelf endures. It always does.