Sony‘s decision to go forward with a fully discless future for its PlayStation consoles, starting with the PS6, took even one of its former executives by surprise. Back in February 2025, Shawn Layden (who had left Sony in 2019 after a 32-year career during which he was CEO of SIE America and Chairman of SIE Worldwide Studios) claimed Sony wouldn’t do that because of their far-ranging market reach: some countries, he reasoned, still had a prominent retail presence.
However, on July 1, 2026, Sony proved him wrong when it announced that it would cease producing PlayStation discs from January 2028 onward. A huge online backlash followed, though the Japanese corporation has remained steadfast in its new policy so far. Now, speaking on The Expansion Pass podcast, Layden has finally shared his full thoughts on the controversial decision, admitting that it’s a significant brand hit for PlayStation.
I think it was covered at the time when the announcement came out that I was sad to hear about that decision. Again, not having been in the room, I don’t know what the stressors were around that and what the spreadsheet said, because I’m sure this is a heavily spreadsheeted decision, where the costs are being contained and where the profit is being extracted.
I don’t know any of that, but I do think that gamers are—yeah, we like the digital download. People said, ‘Downloading a game is easier than going to the store.’ No, no. Downloading a game is easier than going across my living room to put a disc in the machine. I don’t even have to do that. I just press a button on my controller and I don’t have to move. The convenience of that is unquestioned. But I do think, particularly in the gaming realm, maybe 80% of people download and 20% don’t, or whatever that breakdown is going to be.
But that’s a super-important 20%. I mean, that is largely the most faithful of the faithful. That is many times the people who buy two copies of every game, right? One never gets out of the shrink wrap, and you play the other one. It’s just like comic-book collectors; you always buy two comic books. I think the ability to have the physical disc… we’ve got to remember one of the core drivers of the gamer is this desire to collect, right? We are an inquisitive, collecting sort of people, and we like to show off our stuff. ‘Look at my stuff.’” For those reasons, I don’t agree with that decision.
At the same time, and I think this is probably the more insidious aspect to it, is that it changes the conversation from, ‘Do you own a game?’ to, ‘Do you have access to a digital asset?’ If you don’t own a thing, that means you can’t sell a thing. If you can’t sell a thing, that means you don’t own a thing. And if you don’t own it, then what are you buying? If you’re buying access, that doesn’t quite sound as sexy, to be honest.
People, as people tend to do, will game out the worst-case scenario. And that’s a whole lot of brand hit and reputation bite. As I said, I don’t have any visibility on the financials around it, but that’s a significant brand hit, and I hope it made sense to them.
As Layden points out, Sony most assuredly considered the situation thoroughly from a financial standpoint, though whether it’s the correct choice remains to be seen. From the consumer side, he’s definitely right that digital games provide access rather than ownership, but that’s been the case for a very long time. In fact, that’s part of the arguments Sony is using in court against a proposed class action: reasonable customers already know that the software is licensed, not sold.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief.
In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech’s gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews.
Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications.
His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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