Is Sony Having Second Thoughts About Killing PlayStation Discs? A Developer Survey Says Maybe

My first PlayStation game came in a jewel case with a cracked hinge, handed down from a cousin who'd already finished it. I still have it. My nephew has never owned a game he could lend to a friend, and that thought has been bugging me ever since July.

That's when Sony announced that physical disc production for new games on PlayStation consoles will end in January 2028. Games already out on disc - and anything releasing on disc before that cutoff - aren't affected, but after that, new releases go digital through PlayStation Store and digital retailers. Sony's reasoning was that consumer preferences and the wider entertainment industry are moving away from discs.

The response from players was, to put it gently, loud. And now there's a rumour that Sony is listening.

What's being reported

According to IGN, content creator Tom said on the Broken Silicon podcast that he'd heard about a survey Sony is circulating among game developers. His sources describe it as possibly the longest survey of its kind they've seen, and somewhere inside it is a question about how studios sell their physical games. Other outlets reporting on the claim say the survey asks developers what they think of the disc decision and whether ending physical releases could cause problems for them.

Please hold this loosely. Nobody has confirmed the survey exists, Sony hasn't commented on it, and even if it's real, asking a question isn't the same as changing course. Companies survey partners all the time.

Why I'm still a little hopeful

Honestly, this one got me, because developers are exactly the people who could make a difference here. Players shouting on social media is easy to wave off as a vocal minority. A publisher telling Sony that boxed copies matter to its retail deals, its collector's editions or its fans in regions with slow internet is a lot harder to ignore.

And there's a lot riding on it beyond nostalgia. Discs are how you lend a game to a friend, sell it on when you're done, pick up a cheap used copy for a kid, or play without downloading something enormous on a data cap. They're also the closest thing we have to actually keeping a game. Smaller studios in particular have used limited physical runs to reach fans and make a bit of extra money, and I'd hate to see that door close on them.

There are still plenty of open questions Sony hasn't answered either, like what happens to the disc drive on future hardware or whether older physical games will keep getting reprints.

I'm not expecting a U-turn. But if Sony really is asking the people who make the games whether this is a good idea, I hope those developers are honest with them - and I hope someone at PlayStation is reading the answers with an open mind. That cracked jewel case on my shelf would like some company.

Image: JDC808 / CC BY-SA 4.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:All_PlayStations_(1-5,_PSP,_%26_Vita).jpg