Sony announced in July it will stop manufacturing physical discs for PlayStation games entirely starting January 2028. Now, weeks later, the pushback isn’t just coming from angry fans anymore. Digital Foundry’s John Linneman says the publishers and developers he’s spoken with are “largely very upset” about the decision, telling his YouTube audience they see “a lot of return, in fact a majority, through physical sales.”
The disc phase-out has already generated one of gaming’s most visible consumer protests this year. Fans organized an indefinite “blackout” of the PS5 console in response, with campaigners encouraging continued individual participation even after the coordinated protest period wrapped. Sony’s own public position has been unmoved throughout: the company stated flatly that it is “not seeing any impact on our business” from any of it, even as vocal fans threaten to cancel PS Plus subscriptions and buy elsewhere.
That consumer backlash ran directly alongside the disc controversy surrounding Grand Theft Auto VI, whose “physical” edition ships as a download code in a box with no actual disc inside. Change.org petitions over that decision collected over 200,000 signatures, with organizer Jade Pearce writing that “a box with only a download code is not the same thing. It is a digital license in plastic packaging. You do not own it. You are renting access that can be revoked.” Despite all of it, GTA VI’s pre-order campaign is tracking toward the strongest launch in gaming history, with estimates as high as $4.5 billion in week-one sales. Rockstar’s own leadership has already framed this as inevitable: the company’s boss on the matter told press bluntly that “discs don’t really make sense” anymore, and that Sony understands that too.
Linneman’s reporting suggests that understanding isn’t shared evenly across the industry. He said the businesses he spoke with expect to shift more of their support toward Nintendo’s Switch 2, which still maintains what he called “a vibrant physical market,” even accounting for the platform’s own controversial Game Key Cards and higher-priced physical cartridges. He was careful to note the divide runs along company size: “the big partners and big AAA studios don’t care,” he said, since larger publishers benefit from the wider margins digital sales provide. His read on where that leaves Sony was direct. “The industry side is not positive, and there seems to be a lot of resentment for what Sony’s doing,” Linneman said. “I’m wondering if this is the kind of thing that will result in potentially less good results for Sony. They’re not infallible and they’re not automatically going to get the audience. We’ll see.”
Not everyone in the industry backs that account. Richard Browne, an industry veteran who has worked at Sony, Psygnosis, and Tencent, pushed back directly on suggestions that Sony might reverse the policy. “There was NO talk of Sony changing strategy at GamesCom,” Browne wrote. “All publishers are following their guidance for discless in 2028. Microsoft will also go discless if they launch a new console.” Browne’s dismissal targeted a specific, separate rumor claiming Sony was reconsidering the timeline entirely because Microsoft was allegedly telling publishers its next console would be “100% physical,” a claim Browne called baseless.
The physical-media fight has also spilled into console loyalty questions. Microsoft’s newly announced Disc to Digital feature, letting players convert existing physical game libraries into digital licenses on next-generation Xbox hardware, arrives at a moment when Sony offers players no comparable path forward for their own disc collections. Sony has already begun retraining staff at its disc manufacturing facility in Austria, a move suggesting the January 2028 cutoff is not up for negotiation regardless of how loud the resentment gets, from publishers or from players.
If the people actually making the games are telling reporters they’re upset about losing a revenue stream Sony insists doesn’t matter, whose read on the business is going to turn out to be right, the publishers watching their own sales data, or the company that keeps saying none of this is having any impact at all?
NEXT: GTA VI’s “Boycott” Was Never Real, and the Numbers Prove It