Sony has broken its silence on the backlash to its decision to stop making PlayStation discs, but so far the response hasn’t soothed concerns.
A month ago, the company announced that physical disc games will be discontinued for PlayStation consoles from January 2028, citing the massive shift over to digital in recent years.
The news made headlines around the world and stirred fierce backlash online with calls for boycotts and the community-organised ‘PSBlackout’ event in which fans are being asked to turn off their consoles and PSN during the final week of August
Sony hasn’t commented on it until now as part of a Q&A session following its Q1 2026 earnings announcement. Sony CFO Lin Tao said the company had been giving the decision to go digital-only thought well before they announced it and there’s no plan to change, even as they acknowledged the backlash. Tao says :
“When we think about the future, 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.
To this decision we have received various opinions, and people have strong views, and we understand that the community has put forward 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 also indicated Sony has been in discussion with retailers in an attempt to find solutions that will make both sides happy – such as code-in-a-box releases.
“In North America this has already happened, but without discs in the package there’s a code included; that’s how they sell in North America. There are regional characteristics for each regional partner, so we’ll try to have thorough dialogue so that we can end up in a win-win situation.”
Sony also says they are “not seeing any impact on our business” so far in the weeks since the announcement:
“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 of 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 that feedback.”
Sony’s latest financials show an 82% digital download ratio for full game software across PS4 and PS5 combined. This follows on from Circana advisor Mat Piscatella revealing the other week that only seven PlayStation video games had sold more than 100,000 physical units so far this year in the United States.
