Earlier this year, Sony Interactive Entertainment dropped one of the biggest bombshells the gaming space has seen… Well, potentially ever. You might remember it; the corporation revealed that, as of January 2028, it will cease production of PlayStation discs for any new releases, moving into an all-digital future. It went down like a mouthful of cold sick, as you can imagine.
Shortly after that, a report from an Austrian outlet surfaced, in which they’d spoken with a the President of Sony’s DADC branch, the arm responsible for the manufacturing and distribution of discs. In that interview, it was stated that disc production rates in a major facility would drop to 90% in 2028.
It has now been reported that those numbers were misleading.
Not Drop To 10%, But By 10%
Brian Crecente, Kotaku’s founder, uploaded a report today with clarification on those Austrian numbers, taken directly from the horse’s mouth. In this situation, the horse is Sony’s DADC branch, which, again, is responsible for overseeing the manufacturing of optical storage media (read: discs).
They stated that the original claim that the factory would be dropping disc-based production levels to just 10% was wrong.
To clarify and avoid any misleading information: in that statement Dietmar anticipated an overall product volume decline by 10 percent, not a decline down to 10 percent.
What we know is that games launched after January 2028 won’t have physical versions produced on PlayStation 5, and on whatever platform comes next. But games that launch before then can ‘re-up’ on their disc allotment. This was also reiterated by the DADC, albeit in a very short, sharp manner:
There will be reorders going to the market after January 2028. For details around that I would ask you to liaise with the PR team from PlayStation, as we can’t speak or comment on their behalf.
The dropping of discs has proven to be a PR nightmare for Sony. In social circles, it has been nothing but a non-stop hatefest against Sony and the wider PlayStation brand over the last two months, and there are no signs that things are going to change anytime soon.
Recently, disgruntled gamers kickstarted a PlayStation ‘blackout’ to protest the shutting down of disc production for new games, disconnecting from their consoles for a week to show their solidarity with other boycotters.
It’s a pretty dire situation.
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Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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