Sony Ends PlayStation Discs in 2028 as GTA VI Drops Disc
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- Rockstar Games priced GTA VI at $79.99 for the base edition and $99.99 for the Ultimate Edition ahead of its November 19th PS5 and Xbox Series X|S launch, and confirmed the physical copy will contain only a download code rather than a disc.
- Sony announced it will stop producing physical discs for any new PlayStation games starting January 2028, citing that 85% of PS4 and PS5 game software sales were digital downloads in Q4 of fiscal 2025.
- Sony is repurposing its last PlayStation disc-manufacturing facility and, on the same day as its disc-killing announcement, said it would close the PS3 and PS Vita digital storefronts.
- Microsoft's Xbox will "likely soon" stop making physical discs for its next-gen Project Helix console, per The Verge's Tom Warren, though the company is testing a feature that would let players digitize existing physical game libraries.
- Nintendo still has physical games comprising 45.4% of its sales and is expected to keep discs for the year-old Switch 2, though its new game-key cards are physical cartridges that contain no game data and serve only as download keys.
- Frank Cifaldi, executive director of the Video Game History Foundation, called Sony's move "a significant hit to consumer rights, the resale market, and game creators whose businesses rely on the physical market" and said museums cannot preserve digital-only titles by simply downloading them.
- Capcom reported that 93% of its game sales were digital in its last fiscal year, a figure it expects to rise to 95.4%, while Circana data shows physical game sales peaked in 2009.
Why it matters: Physical game sales, which peaked in 2009 per Circana and now sit at 15% of Sony's software revenue, are effectively ending for PlayStation. Players lose the ability to resell, lend, or permanently own copies, and preservationists warn that museums lack legal tools to archive digital-only titles that may vanish when storefronts close — a risk Sony underscored by shuttering PS3 and Vita stores on the same day it announced the disc cutoff.
