Last week was a disruptive time in the video game industry, as Sony announced it would no longer be creating video game discs starting January 2028. For many, that was the ring-side bell for the death of the physical games industry.
On its own it was big news: one of the biggest players in the space is pulling away from the traditional physical disc format in favour of a digital-only future. But the consequences of this one decision have already rippled out into a boat-full of important topics.
Champions for consumer ownership rights at GOG have spoken out, and many believe this move heralds a disc-driveless PlayStation 6 in the future. Not to mention the impact on the second-hand market, the impact on video game prices, and whether this could lead other console manufacturers, such as Xbox to follow suit.
There’s a lot to dive into. So, to try and get a grip on what this all means, Eurogamer spoke to some of the industry’s biggest (and brightest) experts and analysts to learn more.
So first, what does this mean for the PlayStation 6? Chris Dring from The Game Business believes it suggests a release window for Sony’s upcoming console.
“I think the news suggests that PS6 will likely arrive in 2028, which given the component crisis makes sense,” Dring says. “We can imagine it won’t have the ability to play physical media, which surprises me. I certainly didn’t expect it to ship with a disc drive, but I did anticipate there would be an external option for the millions of PlayStation owners that do still buy discs.”
Piers Harding-Rolls from Ampere Analysis echoed Dring’s sentiment, writing that this “almost certainly guarantees” the PS6 won’t arrive until 2028 at the earliest, elaborating to say the expectation at Ampere is it will launch at the end of 2028. Harding-Rolls also believed the standard version of the PS6 will not include a physical disc drive, writing: “Sony will be looking for all the ways it can reduce the cost of its next-gen console, and this is an easy win.” While he notes that removing the drive will “upset some gamers” that don’t want to pay for a separate drive, some process of converting physical media to digital, as has been rumoured to be in the works at Xbox could alleviate some issues.
It’s also worth noting that Rockstar and Take Two may have arguably kicked off this shift away from discs, having announced physical editions of Grand Theft Auto 6 would come with a code in place of a physical copy. While this practice has been normalised in some regions, Rhyss Elliot doesn’t believe it to be a coincidence, and compares Rockstar’s decision as the shooting of a starting gun.
“GTA has emboldened Sony here, which is a chain reaction that will further embolden others,” Elliot says. “Sony also knew exactly what it was doing by waiting a week. GTA 6 going disc-less was some very effective coverage for Sony – as are the imminent Xbox layoffs. These negative PR beats come in waves, as the attention economy is finite and moves quickly. There’s a reason we had so much bad news on the day GTA 6 pre-orders were lifted last week.”
Harding-Rolls, meanwhile, argues that the major reason for this move was to reduce the cost of goods being sold at retail, and it’s likely that Take Two’s move will “hasten” a trend towards digital codes being sold at retail.
With Sony being the first major console manufacturer to charge over the top on this issue, one also has to wonder whether this will result in Nintendo and Xbox following suit.
Elliot believes the “writing has been on the wall” for a while now. Though, with Sony making its move and effectively killing physical games on its consoles, “the rest of the industry now has a deadline” and a lot of companies will be pressured to follow its example.
“Console has been drifting digital for 15 years, pushed by multi-game subscriptions, the dominance of free-to-play, digital-only perks like pre-loading and early access, and disc-less hardware. The expensive PS5 Pro shipped without a drive at all,” Elliot says. He points to an interesting irony in other mediums: “Vinyl, film, and print are all enjoying an analogue revival right now. Games, a younger medium, are sprinting the other way, because unlike a record label, a platform holder owns the storefront and captures far more by closing the disc than by keeping it.”
What of consumer rights, ownership, and preservation? Dring notes this is a rough situation for preservation, and for those who wish to simply share games they own, though he’s interested to see how Sony works with physical retailers. He wonders if there’s “anything to learn from Nintendo’s key card approach” which while digital allows for the swapping and selling of games.
Elliot describes it as “a real hit” for preservation and ownership, saying: “A disc-less library is a licensed library, playable at the platform’s discretion. So the consumer doesn’t own the collection they supposedly control.” As for the price, Elliot believes this is the crux of Sony’s decision.
“This is all about control,” Elliot says. “Everything Sony gains from killing the disc flows from the fact that a disc is a unit of value the platform holder stops earning from the moment it’s first sold. A disc can be resold or rented a hundred times, and Sony sees revenue from exactly one of those transactions.”
He points out that since Sony owns the price of games while digital, such as how high a game launches, how long that price holds and for how much it is eventually discounted, the power in a disc-less world is in its hands. He adds: “Now that the base price of massive-IP games is $80, that control is worth a bloody fortune.”
Harding-Rolls suggested that the price of digital games sold via retail will be set by the retailers, not Sony.
“Follow the example of the GTA VI download-in-a-case example – Take-Two has set the wholesale price for that and suggested a recommended retail price the same as the digital PS storefront version. Retailers are free to reduce the price point based on the wholesale price they have paid. Like physical game sales at retail, digital codes at retail will follow the same principles. However, it is likely that more sales will be concentrated into the PlayStation Store with this shift in product strategy.”
For Dring, despite all the business sense it may make to others, the news did surprise him. However, he points to the realities of modern entertainment.
“The new generation of people coming through are so swamped with entertainment, it surrounds them, that it creates almost a disposable view of the art that gets created,” Dring says. “There’s so much that it doesn’t really impact anyone if it disappears – not that I think it will necessarily, it’s not like when we all lost those Doctor Who episodes in the 1960s. But regardless, I do look at how vinyl has become a solid business for music, and wonder what the video game equivalent of that might be.”
So it’s a big shift, and perhaps the move that pushes an industry-wide shift away from physical discs. While there are hopes a vinyl revival equivalent may emerge, it is worth noting it was years between the death and re-emergence of that physical medium. The future for games right now seems dead-set on a push to digital, and all the pros and cons that brings.
This is the first of two features on expert analysis on the Sony move away from physical discs, with the next focused on the impact on high street and boutique retails. Keep an eye on Eurogamer for that in the near future.
