You thought it was bad news that Grand Theft Auto VI won’t be getting proper physical copies? Turns out that was just a harbinger for what’s to come. Via the official PlayStation Blog, the Sony videogames subsidiary announced that “physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting January 2028”. This is being pinned on changes in “consumer preferences and the broader entertainment industry”, claiming that they “continue to shift away from physical discs to digital”.

With that claim in mind, PlayStation says that shifting away from physical discs “is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment”. The company goes on to say that “this transition will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today”. Though I’m sure plenty of people are letting the company know otherwise on social media. The rich irony is the brand also saying that “we’ll continue to prioritise our resources to drive innovation in how players can access games and provide choices as to where players prefer to purchase new games, whether that’s at retailers or PlayStation Store”.

By buying games at retailers, chances are the company means buying a code in a box, much like the case with Grand Theft Auto VI. And if that’s what PlayStation is going for, there’s a chance this will probably end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, with gamers either just going with standard digital downloads, or just not engaging anymore.

And considering the timing of when this will be implemented, it seems possible that the PS6 will not be launching with a physical disc drive by default. It also puts the existence of optional external drives into question. This would also open the floodgates for Xbox to do the same with whatever Project Helix ends up being called, even if it never makes its way here officially.

Accenting the bad taste is the recent controversy of the brand announcing that it’s removing film and TV content from libraries that customers have bought and paid for. With that happening in recent memory in addition to the whole episode with Discovery a few years back, and PlayStation is really not inspiring much trust that it won’t do the same down the line with these digital-only games.

But in case you missed it, the company sent out notifications to affected individuals that it’s removing anything from Studio Canal on 1 September due to expiring licenses. Over 550 film and TV titles involved will be scrubbed from people’s library because of this.

(Source: PlayStation [1], [2])

Updated 1:57 pm, Thu, 2 July 26