Sony acknowledges players’ attachment to physical games
Sony has publicly addressed the response to its plan to stop producing physical discs for new PlayStation games. The company will end production for titles released from January 2028, while games launched before that date will remain unaffected.
During Sony’s Q1 FY2026 earnings Q&A, CFO Lin Tao was asked about the decision and the criticism that followed. Tao said Sony announced the change around 18 months in advance because it wanted to give customers and partners time to prepare.
Tao said there were several reasons behind the decision. The main factor was the continued shift toward digital distribution across games and other entertainment content . She said Sony spent considerable time reviewing the change and would move forward cautiously.
Sony also acknowledged the reaction from players. Tao said the company had received “various opinions” and that “people have strong views.” She added that games are connected to personal memories and that Sony understands the emotional attachment players have to physical releases.
On this point, we announced that January 2028 onwards, we will no longer be manufacturing game discs. One and a half years ahead. We made this announcement at this time. 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, when we think about the future, we put in a lot of thought and time, we cautiously considered this, we came to this conclusion, we’re going to cautiously move this forward.
To this decision, we have received various opinions, people have strong views, 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, it’s connected to people’s fond memories in many cases. We understand those emotions. We want to consider that.
In the future digital ecosystem, how do we engage the gamers is something that we would like to continue to explore. Thank you very much.— Lin Tao, Executive Officer and CFO, Sony Group Corporation
However, Tao did not suggest that Sony was reviewing or reversing the decision. She said the company would continue examining how it engages with players through its future digital distribution model.
Sony does not expect the change to reduce sales
A second question asked whether the announcement had already affected users or sales. Sony said it had not recorded any business impact and did not expect ending new disc production to hurt future results because most PlayStation content sales have already moved online. The company again said it would consider feedback from players with an attachment to physical games.
Sony also announced that digital downloads represented 82% of PlayStation full-game sales last quarter.
Source: Investing (transcript)
