Sony PlayStation has announced that it will discontinue physical disc production of new games from January 2028.
In a posting on their official website, the company says the shift to a digital release-only strategy is in response to “shifting trends in consumer preferences”.
The transition will reportedly have no impact on games that already released, or will be released in disc format, prior to January 2028.
They say the transition “will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today.”
An analyst for Ampere Analytics says in response to this news that “we believe this almost certainly guarantees that the PS6 won’t arrive until 2028 at the earliest” and their expectation is now for a Fall 2028 launch.
They also expect a physical disk drive won’t be included in the base model but either an “add-on disc drive” or process to transfer physical media to a digital license could be used.
The comments follow on from a NeoGaf posting from a hardware insider that indicated the PS6 would “cost about $960 to assemble right now” and doesn’t include shipping, storage, marketing, and other associated costs.
In a separate statement, Sony has also confirmed it’s also closing down PlayStation Store on PS3 and PS Vita over the course of the next year. New content purchases will no longer be possible once the PlayStation Store closes on these devices.
Source: PlayStation.com
