Discussion summary
PlayStation plans to end physical disc production for new games by January 2028, prompting mixed reactions. Some see it as a natural evolution, while others worry about digital exclusivity and used game markets.
What the discussion says
- Physical disc advocates prefer offline access and game sharing.
- Some users are concerned about digital-only future and game ownership.
- Others see digital as more convenient and future-proof.
“Physical disc died a long time ago, most games require patches or downloads.”
“This move is cynical, hang on to your disks for the used market.”
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- Hacker News
- This will hopefully backfire. As soon as there are no more physical copies of games available, Sony will run into the same situation that Apple is currently, which will make them a Gatekeeper in the EU. That will eventually mean that they need to open their platform for third-party-vendors. But, yeah. It will be bad for a few years at least, I'm afraid.by MrGilbert
- Why would physical copies matter for this? All physical games have to be signed by Sony anyways so it's not like a third-party can produce them.by jwitthuhn
- My first thought reading this was I wonder if Sony is planning to wind down or spin off Sony DADC, their commercial optical disc manufacturing subsidiary they’ve run since the dawn of the CD.
Sony DADC presses every PlayStation games but also has spent decades manufacturing CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, UHD Blu-rays, software, and other optical media for 3rd party customers across the entertainment and computer industry.
If PlayStation discs disappear in 2028, that removes one of the last massive, guaranteed sources of demand for optical disc production inside Sony. Even if the plants continue serving movies, music, and third-party clients for a while, it’s hard not to wonder if this announcement is also the beginning of the end for one of the last major end-to-end optical media manufacturers in the supply chain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Digital_Audio_Disc_Corpor...
by VanTheBrand - Sucks to see this right after the Studio Canal movie situation [1]. I won't be getting another PlayStation.by zache6
- Why would anyone “buy” movies from PlayStation. That’s not their business, I would never have expected them to be in it for the long haul, just like MS did a rug pull on this a few years ago didn’t they?by MBCook
- My thought as well. "Great" timing.by steve1977
- Shutting down the stores on the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita, too.
https://blog.playstation.com/2026/07/01/an-update-on-playsta...
Discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48745476
by OuterVale - Shit, they tried a while ago with a lot of pushback. I hope they don't. I love my vita, and while realistically anybody playing one nowadays has it hacked and can get games from wherever they please, it sucks that the only official way is going the way of the dodoby mghackerlady
- This is why I will not be buying a PlayStation 6. I've had my Steam account for 20 years (21 come October) and I can still download every single thing I've ever bought there. Why should I invest in buying PS6 games when they're gonna be made obsolete by Sony?by Hamuko
- Closing the online store for older systems simultaneously with announcing the dropping of physical media leaves an interesting question for the future. Even if you’ve never bought an online PS3 or Vita game, you’ll still be able to use the systems for physical games. Presumably once the PS6 store is gone, any console is just an ornament if you don’t have access to an account with games already purchased (and how long will the download servers stay up anyway? What is the foreseeable future?).by fredoralive
- Discs are less convenient so people have slowly moved to digital sales. This worked even better for console manufacturers, cheaper to drop that disc reader, and the second hand market is effectively dead which increases new game sales.
The side-effect most people didn't consider is that you never really own a digital copy. And the most relevant part is that you cannot transfer/sell a digital copy. For everything else around ownership I know I can count on Sony to still screw it up even with discs, like disabling a disc game with some online checks.
by buran77 - I remember joke “you will own nothing and will be happy”, it is less of a joke now.
- Yes.
When you die, your digital assets may simply disappear.
There's no inheritance practice, that I know of, of transferring digital assets.
by ncr100 - "The side-effect most people didn't consider is that you never really own a digital copy."
I understand that this is the reality we live in, but I don't know how we have accepted it.
by kuu - Discs are way more convenient. You can store how many multi hundred gb games on your internal storage before you have to start triaging. Also, want to play a game you haven’t played in a while after work? Sorry, 3 hour forced update.
In the old disc era you’d just pop in the disk and start playing in minutes. You could have as many disks as would fit in your house.
Oh no, you have to stand up and walk 10ft to put it in. What a great inconvenience.
by kjkjadksj - > And the most relevant part is that you cannot transfer/sell a digital copy.
EU or any other gov can pass a law to allow that and we'll have the option.
by mittensc - It's a weird trajectory to see because with the music industry people have started catching on and either support sites that offer more durable forms of ownership or have straight up reverted to physical ownership.by fzeroracer
- > The side-effect most people didn't consider is that you never really own a digital copy.
This is true for consoles, but on GoG for example you can download the DRM offline installer for the games you buy. So going purely digital doesn't have to be terrible on its own. But of course, for consoles it will be.
by wtetzner - And also quality.
I wouldn't think that the copy of some movie Netflix is streaming to me will be 60-100GB over the duration of the movie. Not to mention when their services have issues and you're watching 5-10 minutes of low quality content until it settles and snaps up to full (streaming) quality.
by fennecfoxy - I don't own a PS5, I do own a PS4 however and still buy physical copies of games - some of which of late have been secondhand from CeX - because 1. I don't like renting content, 2. I hate DRM, 3. physical copies are harder to censor.
Sony recently expunged copies of movies people had bought, so I honestly don't trust them not to do the same with games.
Also, they announced the closure of the PS3 store, so that's even less reason to trust that I won't be able to reobtain the games I've bought digitally in the future...
by Jigsy - Physical copies aren’t harder to censor nowadays, unfortunately. All they have to do is push a “you can’t start this game without the latest update, and the latest update is unavailable” update and it’s gonzo.by ksjaixjwjx
- Actually, thinking about this now, I tried to play PS1 games on my PSP about two years ago, but couldn't because they needed to be (re-)authenticated.
Sadly, there's NO way to authenticate PS1/PSP games on PSP anymore. Even connecting it to the PS3 via USB and trying to authenticate it didn't work.
(At least PS1 games still work on PS3 for now, though.)
by Jigsy - Though you have a physical copy of the game, I don't discount a future where a console refuses to load a physical copy of the game because DRM impedes it. Much like when short-lived TLS certificates expire on their own, even by being offline.
Physical copies of games have in their EULA that the game is licensed to you, so theoretically they could still disable it.
Precedent? BlackBerry phones refused to connect to WiFi if you didn't pay for your mobile data plan. It became a 2G brick.
- > Sony's announcement follows Rockstar's announcement that Grand Theft Auto 6 will come with a download code in a box rather than a physical disc. It's a move that most notably stamps out second-hand reselling of a game.
This is the big point for me. If one buys a digital PlayStation game there's virtually no easy way to transfer it to another owner or sell it like one could do in past console generations. There will always be modding and ways to play game dumps, but it limits that level of "ownership" to those technically inclined to make it work.
by accrual - they weren't happy about people reselling their games for 5 dollars each, when they could charge 75 dollars to each of those people insteadby alightsoul
- > There will always be modding and ways to play game dumps
There won't because advances in defensive cybersecurity have made it so that software exploits are extremely rare (if they exist at all), and modern chips contain hardware defenses against electrical attacks like voltage glitching.
by antiloper - Well, if Nintendo and Microsoft go the same route (and sadly, I see that being almost inevitable at some point), that's probably the end of my interest in gaming as a whole. I generally refuse to 'rent' or 'license' things on a temporary basis, and have decided in this generation that every game I'll get for Switch 2 will be a physical game on cart version, without exception.
And the reasons for that are pretty simple. I like being able to resell games when done with them. I like being able to lend them to friends, or play them on as many consoles as I want. I like the idea of having something that companies (generally) can't remove due to licensing changes or an always online requirement.
This sort of change just feels like yet another step towards constantly renting rather than owning, or streaming games and media without any control over how or when you can use it.
by CM30 - If you care about owning what you buy then why accept consoles in the first place?by account42
- What about PC gaming? There are stores that sell you the game and it's yours to keepby gonzalohm
- > Microsoft go the same route
There's a reason Game Pass and the Series S exist, they just hadn't had the courage to say the quiet part loud yet.
by oliyoung