Related reads:Just 7 PlayStation Games Have Sold More Than 100,000 Physical Copies in the U.S. So Far This Year
Sony’s decision to end production of PlayStation discs for new games from 2028 threatens to destroy the second-hand market, analysts have said.
It’s a tradition as old as video games themselves. Selling games or trading them in to either make some money back on your purchase or make buying new games cheaper has been a valuable option for gamers for decades. I’ve sold and traded in countless games over the years, especially when money was tight and I couldn’t afford to buy new games at full price.
Of course, I’m aware of the transition to digital and digital’s dominance over the market as it stands today. Indeed, I download most of my games these days (I recently bought a copy of Marvel’s Avengers for PS5 from eBay for my son to play because it had been delisted from digital storefronts). But still, I was surprised to see just how big the second-hand video game market remains, and that it’s projected to grow.
CNBC reported on estimates from Dataintelo, which valued the global second-hand video game market at $7.2 billion last year, and predicted it would grow to $13.8 billion by 2034. Consoles are 42.3% of the revenue share of last year’s valuation of the second hand market, with North America the biggest portion of that market. As you’d expect, GameStop and CEX led the competitive landscape in 2025.
Dataintelo said that the second-hand market was fueled by concerns around affordability (I think we can all agree on that one), the growing retro gaming culture, and what it called “digital-to-physical gaming transitions.”
But Sony’s controversial decision to ditch physical discs for PlayStation games threatens to destroy this market. Kazunori Ito, director of equity research at Morningstar, told CNBC that the second-hand market for games will “keep shrinking and eventually disappear.” Michael Pachter, managing director of strategic planning at Wedbush Securities, told CNBC that “brick and mortar game retail is doomed,” when historically, at least one third of games have been sold as used.
Sony’s rationale for ditching discs is that it’s simply following consumer trends. “In response to shifting trends in consumer preference, new games will be released on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only,” Sid Shuman, Senior Director, Sony Interactive Entertainment Content Communications, said in a post on PlayStation Blog.
“As consumer preferences and the broader entertainment industry continue to shift away from physical discs to digital, physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting January 2028. Following this date, new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only. This transition has no impact on games that already released, or will be releasing, prior to January 2028 in disc format.
“This is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs. This transition will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today.”
Reinforcing this trend, Mat Piscatella, Senior Director and Video Game Industry Advisor at Circana, said that just seven PlayStation video games had sold more than 100,000 physical units so far this year in the U.S.. Only two PlayStation video games sold more than 10,000 physical units in the U.S. during the week ending July 11.
However, since the announcement, gamers have called on Sony to U-turn on its decision, signing online petitions and swarming over PlayStation social media posts to express concern about video game preservation and ownership — even overshadowing the release of new games that have nothing to do with what’s going on at Sony.
Complaints have also come from other groups. The UK’s Digital Entertainment and Retail Association (ERA) called Sony’s decision “a triumph of corporate convenience over consumer choice.”
In a statement published online, Kim Bayley, CEO of ERA, said its data shows that 25% of under 25s use discs for gaming, and that discs should remain as a choice on top of digital.
“Every year, millions of gamers still choose to buy physical copies because they value true ownership. A disc can be shared with family, traded in, collected, preserved and, crucially, still played years from now. A download licence often offers none of those freedoms,” Bayley said.
It remains unlikely that Sony will U-turn on this, analysts have told IGN. Dr. Serkan Toto, CEO of Japanese game industry consultancy firm Kantan Games, suggested that even if half a million people cancelled their PlayStation Plus subscription in protest, it would be just a drop in the ocean for Sony.
“I sympathize with physical media fans, but Sony will not reverse this decision,” Toto told IGN. “They of course knew what the online reaction would look like, and they now wait for this storm to pass.
“Sony has over 120 million active PlayStation users,” he continued. “Around 50 million people subscribe to PlayStation Plus. As a thought experiment, let’s say 500,000 cancel in protest, that would be just 1% of that business gone — of course not enough for Sony to start rethinking. Digital is just too lucrative.”
For Sony, going all-digital for new game releases will earn it more money from every sale at a time when console sales are expected to plummet due to their rising cost. For a first-party PlayStation game such as The Last of Us, Sony will only keep around 65% of the money from a physical copy, with around 30% going to the retailer and roughly another 5% on manufacturing costs. Meanwhile, for a physical copy of a third-party game such as the Activision-published Call of Duty, Sony will get a licensing fee, likely around 15%.
For downloads, however, the margins are much higher. For a first-party game sold0% of the revenue. For third-party games such as Call of Duty, meanwhile, Sony keeps a 30% cut (so, roughly $21 for a $70 game)
Piers Harding-Rolls, games industry analyst at Ampere, has said a lot has changed over the course of the last two generations. “Console gaming is the last hold-out for physical media in the gaming sector, but physical product has been declining in importance,” he said in a post on the Ampere website. “Back in 2013 when the PS4 launched, Ampere data shows that only 13% of total full games unit sales for Sony consoles were digital (including digital-only games). Fast forward to 2025, and this digital share of full game purchases stood at almost 80% of the total.
“Inevitably there will be concerns from PlayStation gamers around various aspects of this announcement including choice, accessing older physical games on new consoles, the ability to collect physical games, and game preservation, however the purchasing trends of gamers are clear.”
One analyst said fans of physical media had their chance and blew it, so there’s no going back. “If gamers and preservationists had bought more physical games, Sony wouldn’t have seen the digital sales ratios that justify this decision,” Robin Zhu, a games analyst at Bernstein, told the Financial Times.
Meanwhile, government authorities seem unlikely to be able to do much to prevent Sony going through with its decision. Over the weekend the EU said it was powerless to stop Sony — and indeed any company — from killing discs.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
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