Japanese tech giant Sony Interactive Entertainment has officially announced that it will stop releasing physical discs for new games on PlayStation consoles starting in January 2028. New releases will be sold exclusively on the PlayStation Store and digital retail chains, marking the industry’s gradual move away from traditional media.
Japanese tech giant Sony Interactive Entertainment has officially announced that it will stop releasing physical discs for new games on PlayStation consoles starting in January 2028. New releases will be sold exclusively on the PlayStation Store and digital retail chains, marking the industry’s gradual move away from traditional media.
Sony’s radical decision was announced by the company’s senior director of content communications, Sid Schuman, on the official PlayStation blog. At the same time, insiders claim that American Microsoft is developing «Disc-to-Digital» technology for Xbox consoles.
Sony explains its decision by the natural evolution of the market and the rapid change in consumer preferences, as sales of digital versions are now significantly ahead of physical copies on discs.
«As consumer preferences and the entertainment industry as a whole continue to shift from physical discs to digital media, physical discs will be discontinued for all new games released on PlayStation consoles starting in January 2028,» said Sid Schuman.
He assured that the changes will not affect games that have already been released or will appear on the market before the specified date.
Microsoft is also planning to ditch discs, but it’s preparing a much smoother transition for its users. The company is testing a «Disc-to-Digital» (Disc2Digital) feature, first hinted at recently in the code for the Xbox app for PC. It will allow Xbox One and Xbox Series X owners to transfer their existing physical discs to their digital library.
To digitize, the player will simply insert a compatible disc into the console, install the game and launch it under their Microsoft account. The resulting license will be tied to a specific media. If the user decides to sell the disc or lend it to a friend, the right to the digital copy will automatically transfer to the new owner during the next launch.
Digitized games will support cloud gaming via Game Pass and Xbox Play Anywhere on PC. However, compatibility will not be 100%, partly due to the technical features of the production of older media.
«It all depends on how and when the disc was manufactured, and it may not have the features required for this application,» Microsoft developers warn internal testers.
The changes come as the company gears up for the next-generation consoles. Microsoft has yet to make a final decision on whether its upcoming Xbox console (codenamed Project Helix) will have a built-in disc drive. If it doesn’t, Disc-to-Digital will be critical for gamers looking to preserve their physical game collections in a completely disc-less future.
