Gaming industry analysts responded: sony's decision to stop releasing physical discs, with the industry saying there is an opportunity to further reduce production costs. On July 1, Sony officially announced that it would stop releasing new video game discs for PlayStation consoles starting in January 2028.
This decision led many to believe that Sony's next-generation console would be digital-only or include a separately sold disk drive. However, it's not yet clear how the disc outage will affect the actual game release. Now, one expert says the future isn't entirely certain, but one thing is clear: companies like Sony can now cut costs to achieve better sales margins.
PlayStation's largest disc creation site is already being repurposed
Disc-based PlayStation games won't be released until 2028, but Sony has already started to scale back production of physical copies.
Prepaid gaming cards may soon replace physical boxes.
“There is an opportunity to further reduce costs,” says Piers Harding-Rolls, gaming industry analyst at Ampere Analysis. He suggests this could be done through prepaid gaming cards or similar alternatives. Harding-Rolls said publishers now have to take on additional risk by investing in producing discs and paying royalty fees to Sony “before they get paid.” The analyst therefore believes that eliminating the costs associated with physical media production could help publishers achieve better profit margins and ultimately offset increases in other areas such as development and staffing budgets.
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According to Harding-Rolls, the decline in physical game releases poses a direct threat to retailers that specialize in selling video games. He believes that to reduce this risk, companies must develop more creative ways to still deliver some form of physical product. “Spending time on physical media means transforming in-store digital game sales to replace lost business,” he says. One such “solution” is to switch to prepaid gaming cards, which are already familiar to many gamers and are cheaper to produce.
Losing a disc can make your game box smaller
Harding-Rolls believes Take-Two's decision to replace GTA 6 discs with in-box codes, in addition to Sony's no-disc policy, will encourage more major video game publishers to follow suit. “[The] This move will accelerate the trend of selling digital codes at retail stores rather than physical media,” he says. What's still unclear, however, is whether publishers will continue to release these “physical codes for digital games” in full-size cases. If the primary motivation for the discless movement is to reduce production costs, it would make sense for publishers to give up physical boxes as well or reduce their size to save money.
In theory, the discless digital gaming industry should be more sustainable, given that ongoing RAM shortages and similar production obstacles have had a negative impact on video game companies. But the concern is that a digital-only ecosystem threatens ownership and, as Harding-Rawls explains, “undermines the used game market.” Sony's track record of removing users' digitally owned products without notice or refund doesn't help inspire optimism about how things are going.
Unsurprisingly, gamers' reaction to Sony's announcement has been largely negative, and there's even a petition asking Sony to reconsider discarding the discs. Still, many experts, including Harding-Rolls, believe that “the importance of physical products is declining” and that a shift to a diskless policy is inevitable for large companies like Sony.
Source: Ampere Analysis
