It’s Official: Your PS5 Disc Drive Is Just For Show Now

By TeeJay Small
| Published 39 seconds ago

Discussions about physical media have been popping up constantly in recent months, as film fans lament the frustrating tedium of streaming services, AI upscales, and licensing agreements that strip you of your digital purchases without your consent. Now, Sony has ignited a fire in the hearts and minds of gamers, by announcing that they’ll be doing away with physical games completely. Per a report in Polygon, the PlayStation 6 will have no disc drive, and newly developed games will be bought exclusively on the digital PS Store, or will be sold in the form of promo codes inside physical game cases.

The Digital Way Lacks A Physical Tray

For some video game enthusiasts, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. I distinctly recall the 2020 release of the PlayStation 5, which launched with a digital only option at a reduced price. Since I’m kind of a hyper-minimalist, I considered purchasing the console sans-disc tray for myself, before being ultimately swayed toward the standard version by my friends. In the years since, I’ve occasionally borrowed games or popped in DVDs, but the disc drive has largely been decorative in my home.

As far as Sony can tell, I’m not a unique customer. Their 2025 consumer report says that physical games accounted for just three percent of all sales in the 2024 fiscal year, meaning a vast majority of gamers have shifted away from collecting discs, in favor of cloud-based game streaming. The company seems to view this trend as a tacit endorsement of their oncoming policy, with reps stating “This is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical disc. This transition will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today.”

While Sony’s numbers support the decision, you’d never know it by logging onto social media. Video game fans far and wide have taken the news with agonizing fury, alongside calls to boycott, or declarations that the PlayStation 6 will never join their roster of consoles. This news has also broken just as many collectors have begun a pivot back to physical media, in order to preserve their favorite games. One of the major drawbacks of digital downloads is that you never truly “own” them, since the digital dashboard could pull their license or revoke your access at any time.

Is There A Best Of Both Worlds Scenario?

On one hand, it makes sense for the company to stop pumping money into mass-producing discs, cases, and supplementing GameStop storefronts around the globe. That cash could arguably be better spent refining their servers, reducing lag, or building greater assets for gamers to enjoy. On the other hand, it seems absurd that gamers of the future will be expected to spend upwards of $100 for a game that they can’t hold in their hands, bring to a friend’s place, or know for a fact that they can log back onto in 10 years’ time.

Sony claims that the switch will take place in January of 2028, which perhaps hints at a Christmas 2027 release for the still-unconfirmed PlayStation 6. If fans continue to rage against the machine, it’s possible that Sony still has time to pull a Sonic The Hedgehog and backtrack on this policy before launch. Either way, the decline of physical game sales makes it a null point, since even the most ravenous of collectors won’t be able to make it profitable to sell them at scale.

I’d say the best case scenario for physical collectors is a sort of Criterion-style system, where Sony can release special edition discs of their most popular games in small batches. Barring that, we may be entering a fully-digital gaming era, for better or worse.