Seven — that’s the total number of PlayStation titles that have moved more than 100,000 physical copies in the U.S. this year, per Mat Piscatella, Senior Director and Video Game Industry Advisor at Circana. In the week that ended July 11, just two PlayStation games managed to pass 10,000 physical units.
Hold onto those numbers, because they are the entire case.
Today Sony confirmed it will not walk back its plan to halt PlayStation game disc production in 2028, even as it acknowledged the “strong views” flowing in from players.
Sony’s first comment since July 1
The remarks arrived on the back of Sony’s first quarter financial results, in an investor Q&A session with analysts. Chief financial officer Lin Tao, working through a live interpreter, delivered the company’s first reply on the matter since the announcement broke.
“We announced that January 2028 onwards we will no longer be manufacturing game discs. So, one-and-a-half years ahead. So we made this announcement at this time,” Tao said.
“There are various reasons we made this decision. The biggest being that the digitalization of contents overall has been progressing. That’s the big factor. It’s not just for PlayStation, but for all kinds of contents, digitalization is progressing.
“And so when we think about the future, and we put in a lot of thought and time, and we cautiously considered this, and we came to this conclusion, and we’re going to cautiously move this forward.
“And to this decision, we have received various opinions and people have strong views, and we understand that the community has put forth those views to us. Games are loved by many people. It’s a form of entertainment that’s loved by people, and it’s connected to people’s fond memories in many cases.
“And so we understand those emotions. We want to consider that. And in the future digital ecosystem, how do we engage the gamers is something that we would like to continue to explore.”
Give that closing sentence a second pass. It might contain a clue about some form of digital preservation for physical discs. Or it might be precisely the kind of nothing that corporate non-answers usually amount to.
The pushback has been loud — and coordinated
Petitions have circulated online and PlayStation’s social accounts have been flooded with worries about ownership and preservation. Announcements for new releases that have no connection to any of this have been drowned out entirely.
Advocates for physical media are organising a week-long PlayStation boycott in August, meant to signal that ending discs from 2028 won’t be tolerated.
The criticism isn’t confined to players either. The Digital Entertainment and Retail Association in the UK branded Sony’s move “a triumph of corporate convenience over consumer choice.”
How Sony framed it originally: we’re only following you
“In response to shifting trends in consumer preference, new games will be released on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only,” wrote Sid Shuman, Senior Director, Sony Interactive Entertainment Content Communications, in a PlayStation Blog post.
“As consumer preferences and the broader entertainment industry continue to shift away from physical discs to digital, physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting January 2028. Following this date, new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only. This transition has no impact on games that already released, or will be releasing, prior to January 2028 in disc format.
“This is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs. This transition will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today.”
Why a boycott can’t shift anything
Unpopular corporate decisions do get overturned sometimes. Analysts don’t believe this is one of those times.
Dr. Serkan Toto, CEO of the Japanese game industry consultancy Kantan Games, worked through the arithmetic of protest cancellations and concluded the numbers aren’t remotely close.
“I sympathize with physical media fans, but Sony will not reverse this decision,” Toto said. “They of course knew what the online reaction would look like, and they now wait for this storm to pass.”
“Sony has over 120 million active PlayStation users,” he added. “Around 50 million people subscribe to PlayStation Plus. As a thought experiment, let’s say 500,000 cancel in protest, that would be just 1% of that business gone, of course not enough for Sony to start rethinking. Digital is just too lucrative.”
The ratio flipped across two console generations
Piers Harding-Rolls, games industry analyst at Ampere, spelled out just how quickly the landscape changed.
“Console gaming is the last hold-out for physical media in the gaming sector, but physical product has been declining in importance,” he wrote in a post on the Ampere website. “Back in 2013 when the PS4 launched, Ampere data shows that only 13% of total full games unit sales for Sony consoles were digital (including digital-only games). Fast forward to 2025, and this digital share of full game purchases stood at almost 80% of the total.
“Inevitably there will be concerns from PlayStation gamers around various aspects of this announcement including choice, accessing older physical games on new consoles, the ability to collect physical games, and game preservation, however the purchasing trends of gamers are clear.”
One analyst turned the blame around on those objecting. “If gamers and preservationists had bought more physical games, Sony wouldn’t have seen the digital sales ratios that justify this decision,” said Robin Zhu, a games analyst at Bernstein.
Follow the 30%
This is the piece that makes a reversal all but impossible. Shifting new releases entirely to digital nets Sony more on every sale — at the exact moment console sales are forecast to fall sharply because hardware is getting more expensive.
With a first-party disc such as The Last of Us, roughly 65% of the money stays with Sony. Around 30% is taken by the retailer, with a further 5% or thereabouts going to manufacturing. On a physical third-party release like Call of Duty, published by Activision, Sony’s take is a licensing fee of probably about 15%.
Digital inverts all of that. A first-party title bought through Sony’s own PlayStation Store sends 100% of the revenue back to Sony. A third-party download such as Call of Duty carries a 30% cut — approximately $21 on a $70 game.
That’s $21 per copy with no plastic to press, no shelf space to buy, and no retailer clipping a share. Set against that, 500,000 lapsed subscriptions barely registers — and Sony is fully aware of which figure it’s actually tracking.