No physical discs for Playstation games (1st & 3rd party) from 2028 onward

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Couple on-topic articles from Reddit.

Sony distancing itself from social media over the last 24 hours.
It’s now been over 24 hours since Sony posted on any of its social media accounts, and it looks unlikely to return any time soon.

The platform holder’s X, Facebook, Bluesky, and Instagram accounts haven’t changed since yesterday’s controversial physical games news.
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This idea, as I assumed per the PS5 Pro, has been reportedly in the works for a while & unlikely to reverse.
Rather than waiting until 2028 to make changes, Sony has already started investing in new manufacturing technology. According to the report, the company has spent around €30 million on equipment designed to produce optical microlenses, which are used in products that require highly precise light control. One example mentioned is vehicle lighting systems that can project turn signals or other indicators directly onto the road.

The transition is already underway, as employees who previously worked on disc production have reportedly started moving into testing and development roles for the new manufacturing process. Sony also plans to retrain its workforce so the facility can shift its focus without reducing employee numbers. Mass production of these optical microlenses is expected to begin as early as 2027, well before PlayStation game disc production officially ends.

This is one of the biggest reasons why Sony is unlikely to reverse its decision. The company isn't simply announcing a future policy, as it has already invested heavily in replacing part of its existing manufacturing business. With employees being reassigned, new production lines installed, and long-term planning already in motion, it is very unlikely that Sony will go back to making game discs on a large scale.
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www.notebookcheck.net

Sony is unlikely to reverse its decision on physical discs as its digital transition has been in the works for "some time"

Sony yesterday announced that starting in January 2028, the company will stop releasing games on physical discs. Many thought that enough criticism might convince Sony to reconsider its decision, but a new report suggests that this is extremely unlikely.
www.notebookcheck.net www.notebookcheck.net
 
The biggest issue for me personally is games getting delisted and becoming impossible to obtain.
Thinking back for the forza horizon series, if Forza Horizon 2 wasn't on physical media, it would be impossible to play today unless you bought it digitally many years ago. And even now the DLC content is forever locked if you don't own it already.

It really is a shame this is the future we are heading to.
 
McLaren
This idea, as I assumed per the PS5 Pro, has been reportedly in the works for a while & unlikely to reverse.
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And then some.

There's nobody "big" left making UltraHD Blu-ray players except Sony which is more or less now only making them as consoles. The Philips & Lite-On JV is also making BD, and shoving them into different consoles. Optical is just about toast across the board, and the only real surprise is that Sony is keeping with it as long as January 2028.

Half of the issue with games is that the AAA stuff is all now so bloated it won't fit on a 100GB disc, and they can't make more information-dense discs yet because of the wavelength limitations of the blue laser (which got the inventors a Nobel Prize in 2014). Even if they could, the bandwidth of Blu-ray is now less than the average bandwidth of internet connections in a lot of the developed world, and over an order of magnitude lower than the bandwidth of NVMe - so it's "invent a new optical technology at £££££££££s that might be on top for a year or so" or "stream quicker anyway and sell you a subscription"* or "stream even quicker and also sell you more SSDs at the same time".


And yet, it sucks.

*Assuming nobody else is eating your bandwidth
 
I love discs, but to be honest my game library only has around 20% discs because digital bundles often go as low as 80% off, and I rarely buy games at full price. Maybe, just maybe, and it’s a big if, but they might use a memory card or cartridge if the rumors about the PS6 being a dockable handheld turn out to be true.
 
I also hate seeing physical media go away.

But in all fairness, the copies of GT 5, 6 and 7 I have installed and have last played have little in common with the games on disc I’ve purchased way back when.

Correct me if I’m wrong and there actually was a “final edition with all updates included on physical media”.

To me personally that means the games will last as long as my hardware lasts - or until the servers get taken down.
 
Sad that for me, this means Gran Turismo 7 will be my last Gran Turismo game...since there is zero chance I'm buying a PS6 that is a digital only console.

I personally also use my PS5 as a media player for Bluray movies and Anime....so if the PS6 doesn't have a disc drive...I won't support it.

I'm personally starting my boycott of Sony earlier than many others. I'm personally not buying anything else on PS5 going forward and will just buy it on Switch 2 or not buy it at all if it's not there.

Hoping GT7 stays alive for many more years to come.
 
Famine
There's nobody "big" left making UltraHD Blu-ray players except Sony which is more or less now only making them as consoles.
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Sony:
  • UBP-X700 (including variants)
  • UBP-X800M2
Panasonic:
  • DP-UB150 and 159
  • DP-UB420
  • DP-UB450
  • DP-UB820
  • DP-UB9000
Magnetar:
  • UDP800
  • UDP900
It's not over yet, though there's certainly less options left.
I am worried what'll happen if Sony and Panasonic leave the market, though. Might need to get an Xbox as a backup player...
 
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McLaren
This idea, as I assumed per the PS5 Pro, has been reportedly in the works for a while & unlikely to reverse.
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Sony's stock is apparently up since the announcement. No way anything is getting reversed all the time their bottom line isn't being affected.
 
Spacegoat
Sony's stock is apparently up since the announcement. No way anything is getting reversed all the time their bottom line isn't being affected.
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Its a big upset for a lot of invested gamers, but what's with all the causals? We are here in a bubble with mostly like-minded people. Is the majority of the player base (casual players) that interested in this change? Are they informed well enough to see the consequences of it? I doubt it
 
Miroku
Sad that for me, this means Gran Turismo 7 will be my last Gran Turismo game...since there is zero chance I'm buying a PS6 that is a digital only console.

I personally also use my PS5 as a media player for Bluray movies and Anime....so if the PS6 doesn't have a disc drive...I won't support it.

I'm personally starting my boycott of Sony earlier than many others. I'm personally not buying anything else on PS5 going forward and will just buy it on Switch 2 or not buy it at all if it's not there.

Hoping GT7 stays alive for many more years to come.
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Same here... I can’t see myself ever buying a digital PS6... especially as my PS5 is only a year old... ☹️
I don’t watch TV or films, I only play GT7...

I’m 77 and recently someone asked me how long I was going to carry on playing like a teenager?...😂😜😜
Well, I know now – until the GT7 servers are up and running...

I’ve still got some 2-chilli races left on the Power Pack and a few "track experience" challenges to finish, and then they can shut them down.....

I’ll go fishing and tend to my garden......😂😂
 
Lunard
That makes sense.
The last physical game I bought was GT7 for the PS4 at release.
After I sold that console—along with my games—to buy a PS5, I switched entirely to digital.
It might be more expensive, but I find the format more convenient, with no need to wait for delivery or going to the physical stores.
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Yea, because having it delivered same day from Walmart or next day from Amazon or Best Buy is such a hassle, often for cheaper than digital.
Not picking on you directly, but this shows how lazy and "need my fix now" this society has become. I'm so glad my time on this earth is getting closer to coming to an end.
My question is, my library is 98% physical and my sdd is almost always near full. How do you all manage that? Delete and download/reinstall when you want to play again? I have super fast Internet and I think it's more annoying to wait for a game to download and install. 🤷
I do know that PS5 will be my last PlayStation and that's a shame.
 
DGozinya
Yea, because having it delivered same day from Walmart or next day from Amazon or Best Buy is such a hassle, often for cheaper than digital.
Not picking on you directly, but this shows how lazy and "need my fix now" this society has become. I'm so glad my time on this earth is getting closer to coming to an end.
My question is, my library is 98% physical and my sdd is almost always near full. How do you all manage that? Delete and download/reinstall when you want to play again? I have super fast Internet and I think it's more annoying to wait for a game to download and install. 🤷
I do know that PS5 will be my last PlayStation and that's a shame.
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There are places where delivery does take a long time. If I order something from Amazon, even if it's Prime, I'm lucky to have it in 4-5 days. The nearest Best Buy to me is over an hour for me. I'm sure this isn't uncommon for people, so is working nights or not being home to sign for deliveries. There's some nuance here and it's not necessarily laziness.

And how do you manage downloaded games? Yes, you uninstall the games you no longer play. Even if you have physical discs for games, at some point you'll run out of hard drive space and need to delete the install files and patches. So having the physical disc with a modern console doesn't protect you from always being able to play the game. Sony or Microsoft could easily just remove the ability to download those files leaving your disc useless.
 
RobertHammer
Well we have to thank Take-Two Interactive and GTA 6 that it torpedoed this move , btw GTA 6 already earned 1 bilion $ just from preorders in just one hour...
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The pre-orders are not only digital people still pre-ordered like I did physical box in code even though I’m upset,I still ordered a physical version to hope they will be a change to add a disk,

I have also decided I will be canceling my PSN subscription. I know it hurts because I like doing sports mode races and taking part in online lobby racing, once again I’m sorry to leave my community behind, but Sony really discouraged me, corporate greed, and not thinking about the consumer
 
Famine
And then some.

There's nobody "big" left making UltraHD Blu-ray players except Sony which is more or less now only making them as consoles. The Philips & Lite-On JV is also making BD, and shoving them into different consoles. Optical is just about toast across the board, and the only real surprise is that Sony is keeping with it as long as January 2028.

Half of the issue with games is that the AAA stuff is all now so bloated it won't fit on a 100GB disc, and they can't make more information-dense discs yet because of the wavelength limitations of the blue laser (which got the inventors a Nobel Prize in 2014). Even if they could, the bandwidth of Blu-ray is now less than the average bandwidth of internet connections in a lot of the developed world, and over an order of magnitude lower than the bandwidth of NVMe - so it's "invent a new optical technology at £££££££££s that might be on top for a year or so" or "stream quicker anyway and sell you a subscription"* or "stream even quicker and also sell you more SSDs at the same time".


And yet, it sucks.

*Assuming nobody else is eating your bandwidth
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In my opinion anyways, if any of these boycotts or protests ever had any hope of working, it needed to happen a long time ago at the inception of when putting a download code on the disc and using it as glorified physical DRM started being the trend.

Once developers and publishers got comfortable not actually putting the game on the physical media they were selling and it became normalized, the fight was over. Maybe then they might have possibly invested in upgraded discs or going back to SD-like cartridges again instead of everything being over-the-air besides your product key.

So again it's neat I guess to see people care and put a ton of effort into bashing Sony with this much passion, but the outcome of this debate was already decided many years ago and it's never going back to the way things were simply due to the way technology progressed to cater to consumer trends and demands.
 
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MisterWaffles
In my opinion anyways, if any of these boycotts or protests ever had any hope of working, it needed to happen a long time ago at the inception of when putting a download code on the disc and using it as glorified physical DRM started being the trend.

Once developers and publishers got comfortable not actually putting the game on the physical media they were selling and it became normalized, the fight was over. Maybe then they might have possibly invested in upgraded discs or going back to SD-like cartridges again instead of everything being over-the-air besides your product key.

So again it's neat I guess to see people care and put a ton of effort into bashing Sony with this much passion, but the outcome of this debate was already decided many years ago and it's never going back to the way things were simply due to the way technology progressed to cater to consumer trends and demands.
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I totally agree when this 1st started happening on the pc side that was the time to complain. Hopefully some antitrust suits can happen against the console makers as they would have a monopoly over game sales. At least on the pc side you have options but console users have M$, $ony & Nintendo. I guess we'll how this shakes out over the next few months & years.
 
There was complaining when Half Life 2 was released (together with steam and tied to a steam account).
There was compaling when Securom with the online activations was added to different pc games (for examples Spore by EA) and limited the times you could activate a game (3x times for spore, activating als included if you installed the game on the same pc but on another hard drive...)
There was complaining when Ubisoft added "always online" drm to their games (first where static data was hosted by ubisoft servers, later crucial parts of the games)
The complaining changed little (securom added 5 times activations) to nothing (you still can't sell the licenses you purchased on steam, epic, uplay, ea, epic, gog and whatever other platform exists) ._.
 
It was nice to open up a GTA game and open the map, but if you think of all the plastic packaging this will save worldwide it's sensible and worthwhile, although the reasons may be more towards profits. Nothing stopping companies giving option to order a map or instruction manual either for a small cost or free with proof of digital purchase. I have bought all playstations from 1-5 (two ps4's when I upgraded to pro) but now leaning towards getting a gaming pc instead of PS6.
 
DGozinya
Yea, because having it delivered same day from Walmart or next day from Amazon or Best Buy is such a hassle, often for cheaper than digital.
Not picking on you directly, but this shows how lazy and "need my fix now" this society has become. I'm so glad my time on this earth is getting closer to coming to an end.
My question is, my library is 98% physical and my sdd is almost always near full. How do you all manage that? Delete and download/reinstall when you want to play again? I have super fast Internet and I think it's more annoying to wait for a game to download and install. 🤷
I do know that PS5 will be my last PlayStation and that's a shame.
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I have all my games installed on my PS5 SSD.
It has a good space.
But, I will only keep on Playstation if Sony continue to giving support for GT series.
Otherwise, I will move for PC.
 
I'm not... wholly sure why this was a response quoting me, but the one bit of it that pertains to my post...
MisterWaffles
Maybe then they might have possibly invested in upgraded discs
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... doesn't really take into account what this requires.

The limitations of discs are the data density of the layers and the number of layers, and both essentially are limited by the laser technology.

A data layer is basically a load of data etched into plastic with a laser (later to be read by another one), backed with a reflective coating. Discs with multiple data layers have to have only semi-reflective coatings, made of gold or silver alloy, to allow the laser to pass through deeper into the disc to further layers. More layers is also thicker and heavier which is bad for things spinning 100 times a second.

How much data you can fit on the layer depends on the wavelength of the laser - which is literally the amount of space between bits of data that the laser can see. CDs and DVDs use pretty long wavelength red lasers - 780nm for CD, 650nm for DVD - which results in a maximum capacity of about 800MB for CD (PlayStation-compatible CD-ROMs were 650MB) and 8.8GB for a dual-layer DVD. The "Blu" part of "Blu-ray" comes from the very short wavelength blue laser, at about 405nm, giving the discs a data density of about 100GB for the triple-layer Ultra HD-specification discs used in the PS5/Xbox Series consoles.

The blue diode that allows for the kind of low-power blue lasers similar to the DVD laser (we've had big ol' blue lasers for quite some time, but they're not quite the same deal) was invented in 1992, with the blue laser itself created in 1996 - the same year as the PS1, and just about ten years before it was put into a games console... It was such a big deal that the guy who discovered how to make the blue diodes won a Nobel Prize for Physics in 2014 for their development into a viable product for blue and white lights and the low-power blue laser, along with his colleagues.

There isn't really a next on either front - there's been some development, and there was an archival disc created in the same form factor with a 1TB capacity based on 32 layers of fluorescent material - but even if there were you hit the bitrate issue.

Lasers take time to read what's on the disc, and even Blu-ray can only hit 100Mbps. That's half the UK's average domestic internet bandwidth - 233Mbps - and the UK isn't exactly world-leading, but in ideal conditions you can stream data to your device down the internet twice as fast as you can from the disc inside it. And then there's the NVMe SSD inside your console, which streams at ~10GBps and is already a generation out of date.


For reference, I hate the whole thing, and the walled garden and dynamic pricing is designed to screw you over from the start while the unlaterally revokable licences are designed to screw you over at the finish, but the writing has been on the wall for discs for some time now, even without PlayStation's nonsense justification that "full software sales" (games, rather than add-ons, but no mention of the prices/ages of the games) are 80:20 in favour of digital (and no mention of the fact that when they sell more games, that ratio goes more physical).
 
Famine
a load of data etched into plastic with a laser (later to be read by another one)
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Isn't this how cd/dvd/bluray burners work and it's not really etching but destroying pigments to create less or more reflective spaces that represent lands and pits? I think commercial discs are pressed and if it's a dual or tripple layer disc then glued together?
 
i386
Isn't this how cd/dvd/bluray burners work and it's not really etching but destroying pigments to create less or more reflective spaces that represent lands and pits? I think commercial discs are pressed and if it's a dual or tripple layer disc then glued together?
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In essence, yes, though the original master is (as far as I'm aware) burned and the copies are moulded from it. The amount of data is ultimately limited by the wavelength of the read/write laser.

It's not really plastic either, except in the vaguest possible terms :lol:

Edit: The reader for the 32-layer 1TB (archival) disc I mentioned is $3k.
 
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I don't really have anything of substance to share; just venting at the problem and laughing at it if I can.

(Bad language in video.)

​


Yes, this channel is how I choose to get my news on global events and happenings because real news is too depressing.

Like some have said, the PS5 and GT7 will be my last purchases from Sony. I was already feeling terribly insulted by GT7's launch state and persistent issues both with the game and hardware, but I was having a lot of fun with it in recent years, bugbears and all. I was already going to let my PS+ subscription expire; this news just pushed me fully across the fence to not buy new AAA games anymore. I'm just so... sick and tired, of all the asterisks, caveats, and strings attached to modern gaming and life in general. I'm aware that I need help, but I refuse to believe this world isn't the sick one.

And to think, I was so excited when I got my GT7 disc and the PS5 I bought specifically to play it.

6376.webp

I'm gonna be that stereotypical old man yelling at the clouds, but I'll at least be in my happy place playing Metal Slug till the day I die.
 
I'm a very simple man when it comes to physical games. More than the preservation aspect, the "whole game on disk" vs "downloads and servers" thing etc...

...I like selling the games I've finished so I can buy new ones. I don't think that's the most outlandish concept. Sure, I keep playing some games for many years, but most of them (e.g. 007 First Light, which I played in June) I'd rather sell or trade in for another game I want to play. That's why I'm even supportive of Nintendo's Game Key Cards. It's a physical DRM I can pass forward if I want to.

In a weird weird fantasy world, one of these companies would allow us to sell our game licenses to others so we could "trade-in" digital games but I know that's never happening :P
 
Another big concern I'm having with the phasing out of physical media is that we'll see subscription-based models becoming more of the norm. As games & hardware become more expensive, you'll see more people gravitate towards renting them because it's presented as the more affordable option. For people who can't afford to save up money and live from paycheque-to-paycheque, it'll be the only option for them.

And then that's where they'll trap you. You've got games subjected to dynamic pricing models on the digital storefront, but because physical media has been phased out, that leaves subscription-based services as the only alternative. It's no different than how a duopoly works.
 
Famine
Just an additional crumb for those who think it doesn't affect them (it will anyway, even if they don't want to see it) so they're alright jack.

No physical release means this across the board...

www.polygon.com

Oh no, Sony is testing dynamic pricing on PS5 games

The experiment, which includes 68 regions, displays differing prices for the same PS5 games. Sony is also testing personalized sales.
www.polygon.com www.polygon.com

... so you may be paying a different price for a game than your mates from the exact same walled garden and you have no alternative.
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While it's possible that you could pay more, what if you end up paying less? That's surely a positive, right? Or alternatively, just wait for the price to change again.

I don't get the whole negativity about the PS6 being digital only. Sure, you'll lose the ability to play old games on disc (unless you keep your older consoles) but chances are, they'll eventually reinstate them digitally like they've done with the likes of Max Payne, Devil May Cry, Onimusha etc.
Saving on space is a fantastic thing IMO. It seriously annoyed me when I used to have so many DVDs and Blu-Ray discs laying around collecting dust and taking up loads of space.
Every time I wanted to watch a movie, had to load it in the disc drive and disc drives can depreciate over time and completely stop working. Discs can also get deeply scratched and stop working.
Nothing is fullproof, unfortunately. And even if you rent it rather than own it- who cares? It's not going to make a massive difference to your life if you're able to sell it on the second-hand market or not. We're talking about a game here, not a business or a classic car.
 
I bought the PS5 mainly for the backwards compatibility with my existing physical collection of PS4 games.

Still, I’m not that upset about it, if at all. I have yet to buy a physical PS5 game, which indicates that I’ve willingly gone down the digital route.

Main concerns for me going forward are licensing and if Sony is ever going reevaluate their pricing model. I’m assuming they most likely won’t and prices for both games as well PS+ subscriptions just going to continue go up.

The above will most likely decide and cement my plans that this generation of consoles possibly being my last.

🤷‍♂️
 
I’ll take an all digital Gran Turismo 1-6 without sponsors. :sly: Relicensing the cars and tracks would be enough. :)
 

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