Today’s Sony Q1 FY 2026 earnings call had one main focus for PlayStation gamers: how the company would respond to the vehement online backlash fans have shown against its decision to stop making discs from January 2028.
Well, despite all the Change.org petitions and various social media campaigns, it doesn’t seem like they are swaying one bit. Sony CFO (Chief Financial Officer) Lin Tao addressed the topics in the call, as and despite acknowledging the reaction, the plan is to “cautiously go forward”
There are various reasons we made this decision, the biggest being that the digitalization of content overall has been progressing; that’s the big factor. It’s not just for PlayStation, but for all kinds of content, digitalization is progressing.
And so, when we think about the future, and we put in a lot of thought and time, and we cautiously considered this and we came to this conclusion, and we’re going to cautiously move this forward. And to this decision, we have received various opinions, and people have strong views, and we understand that the community has put forth those views to us.
Games are loved by many people. It’s a form of entertainment that’s loved by people, and it’s connected to people’s fond memories in many cases. And so we understand those emotions. We want to consider that. And in the future digital ecosystem, how do we engage the gamers is something that we would like to continue to explore.
Tao was also asked whether the backlash had impacted the PlayStation business, and she said no, at least for now.
At this point in time, we are not seeing any impact on our business. But going forward, about the content sales, a large part is already digitized. And therefore as a result the discontinuation of discs, we don’t see that there will be any negative impact on our business. However, as I already said, the users, the players have attachments and we have to think about how to respond to those feedbacks.
During the call, the Sony executive even responded to whether this would affect the corporation’s relationship with retailers, to which Tao replied that game publishers will still be able to ship boxes containing a digital code. Of course, that’s not nearly the same thing for many gamers, so it is doubtful that it will be much of a business.
Sony also said 66.1 million games were sold across PS5 and PS4 in the period. Furthermore, the Japanese corporation claimed to have secured sufficient memory supply to support its PS5 sales plan and still expects hardware profitability for FY2026 to remain broadly similar to that of FY2025.
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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