Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation • Hacker News Board

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#121

Post by techwizrd » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 2:10 PM UTC

tacticalturtle wrote: post #116

thimabi wrote: post #93

In a few years Sony executives will be wondering why a portion of their consumer base decided to prioritize other forms of entertainment. I can speak for myself in that I’ve never upgraded past the PS3, and I feel no regrets about it.

At this point it’s a pretty small portion. Last quarter 85% of all game sales were digital. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/sony-just-reported-a-new-r...

They've also been pushing digital-only PS5s and PS5 Pro so there are fewer reasons to get a disk if you have no disk drive. They have created the problem that they are "solving."

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#122

Post by mghackerlady » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 2:10 PM UTC

phire wrote: post #23

With this news, I have to wonder how much longer bluray will live. Will we continue seeing new bluray releases of movies and TV shows for decades, or are their days numbered? The loss of console gaming presumably removes a guaranteed revenue source that was keeping Bluray pressing plants alive. Sales of DVDs and Bluray have been declining for years [1] [3] . Some people have been excited pushing the news that UHD blu…

I honestly doubt they'll stop. Sony is a Japanese company, and they seem to still enjoy buying blurays

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#123

Post by Telaneo » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 2:11 PM UTC

cryptoegorophy wrote: post #90

buran77 wrote: post #8

Discs are less convenient so people have slowly moved to digital sales. This worked even better for console manufacturers, cheaper to drop that disc reader, and the second hand market is effectively dead which increases new game sales. The side-effect most people didn't consider is that you never really own a digital copy. And the most relevant part is that you cannot transfer/sell a digital copy. For everything else…

I remember joke “you will own nothing and will be happy”, it is less of a joke now.

It's from a 2016 essay. I'm not sure it was ever only a joke. I didn't even perceive it as a joke back then (unless you wanted to joke about companies being knobheads). It was already clear by then that that was the direction they wanted to go.

Adobe Creative Cloud became the only option for new Adobe software in 2013, 3 years before that essay. Sure, Adobe is on the forefront of being knobheads, but still.

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#124

Post by mghackerlady » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 2:12 PM UTC

fennecfoxy wrote: post #95

buran77 wrote: post #8

Discs are less convenient so people have slowly moved to digital sales. This worked even better for console manufacturers, cheaper to drop that disc reader, and the second hand market is effectively dead which increases new game sales. The side-effect most people didn't consider is that you never really own a digital copy. And the most relevant part is that you cannot transfer/sell a digital copy. For everything else…

And also quality. I wouldn't think that the copy of some movie Netflix is streaming to me will be 60-100GB over the duration of the movie. Not to mention when their services have issues and you're watching 5-10 minutes of low quality content until it settles and snaps up to full (streaming) quality.

Most people really don't care, which is a shame. The sheer quality difference between a 4k digital movie and a 4k bluray is astounding. Hell, oftentimes a standard bluray looks better despite the lower resolution since it isn't being compressed

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#125

Post by kuerbel » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 2:12 PM UTC

bigfishrunning wrote: post #83

fluoridation wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>cheaper then a PC that can play equivalent games There are no savings to be had. What you don't pay one way you pay another. >much more reliable (i never have to mess with drivers, updates just work, etc...) So do you not own a computer? How do you avoid dealing with those issues, otherwise?

I own several computers, and I use them for work. Running games on them means either running windows or running an emulation layer, and both solutions are unreliable messes. High end graphics cards are generally very expensive and have required binary-blobs that are really hard to troubleshoot, and (in my experience) always have problems. If I want to play a video game, I turn on my PlayStation and it just works and…

I exclusively play on Fedora if on pc and the only problem I had up to now was with the ps5 controller and some weird rumble input. That was easily fixed with some googling.

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#126

Post by NathanielK » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 2:12 PM UTC

bakies wrote: post #84

ktallett wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won't be releasing new Blu Rays for decades. Outside of collectors, why would they? Unless there is a hidden market for the discs elsewhere it's not worth it

Libraries :(

My local library never made the jump to Blu-Ray and still only has DVDs. They have physical copies of video games too though.

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#127

Post by nottorp » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 2:12 PM UTC

asimovDev wrote: post #102

nottorp wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't even need to go used. Discs constantly drop in price even new.

in europe it's often cheaper to buy a game new in box from the retailer than from the PS Store. Not for long maybe. I will mourn the loss of physical games as they are such a big part of console experience

I am in Europe but I just don't do launch prices on any platform or delivery form so I didn't notice that.

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/606/

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#128

Post by tacticalturtle » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 2:12 PM UTC

bilekas wrote: post #19

This is ridiculous, and not long after they've been updating their ToS to require you to sign in and phone home in order to continue to be allowed access to your digital library. > In response to shifting trends in consumer preference. I hate this corporate speak. If buying isn't ownership, then pirating isn't stealing.

It’s not corporate speak - they have hard data in digital vs physical sales that they report on every quarter:

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/sony-just-reported-a-new-r...

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#129

Post by avaer » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 2:12 PM UTC

snarfy wrote: post #113

If they are going digital only then they are competing with Steam. They will lose.

They aren't competing with Steam. The console market is a closed cabal where console makers sell the machine at a loss and make up for it with locked down software where publishers pay a significant proportion of the sales to the console maker, who controls supply and dealflow with private contracts.

They might lose, but it's nothing like PC.

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#130

Post by fluoridation » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 2:13 PM UTC

deadbabe wrote: post #27

I used to think this was bad, but honestly? It’s just games. Some people buy tons of digital games they literally never even play. If they were physical games, imagine all the e-waste. And what’s the point of physical games? So you can play the game in 30 years from now on some retro console you’ve diligently maintained? Get over it, you’re not going to do any of that. There’s no mythical third act where you go throu…

>There’s no mythical third act where you go through some library of physical CDs and reminisce about an old ass game.

Huh? You won't replay every game, sure, but once in a while you'll find a game that you keep coming back to even many years after first playing it. The last time I played Pokémon Red all the way through was only a few years ago. I have permanent Deus Ex, Crysis, FEAR, and Duke Nukem 3D installations on my hard drive, so I can run them for a bit whenever I feel like. Maybe once you put down a game you never pick it again, but don't assume what is true of you is true of everybody.