After Sony announced the discontinuation of physical game discs for PlayStation starting in 2028, a debate erupted online. However, industry analysts believe that the company's decision is purely economic and is unlikely to be reconsidered.
Circana analyst Mat Piscatella stated that fans of gaming platforms should not expect mutual loyalty from large corporations.
You can love your gaming ecosystem, your favorite franchise, or your console as much as you want. But these companies don't love you back. To them, you're just a number in a spreadsheet.
According to Piscatella, console manufacturers will increasingly look for ways to increase profitability, especially amid forecasts that the next generation of devices, including the hypothetical PlayStation 6 and Project Helix, could cost around $1000 or even more. If expensive consoles sell worse, companies will try to compensate for this with higher margins on digital sales.
Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier also explained the financial side of the issue. According to his calculations, from the sale of a physical copy of a game costing $70, Sony receives about $45.5, whereas with a digital sale through the PlayStation Store, the company retains the entire amount. This is why a complete transition to digital distribution looks so attractive from a business perspective.
Starting in 2028, not only games from Sony's internal studios but also projects from third-party publishers will switch to digital format. The latter will also benefit from higher profits, and Sony will continue to receive its commission as the platform owner.
Serkan Toto, head of the analytical company Kantan Games, is confident that Sony will not abandon its chosen course, despite the negative reaction from some parts of the community.
In his opinion, the company's management perfectly understood what kind of reaction the news would cause and will simply wait until public discontent subsides.
Toto also noted the scale of PlayStation's user base: the ecosystem has more than 120 million active users, and about 50 million people are PlayStation Plus subscribers. Even if, hypothetically, 500,000 users cancel their subscription in protest, this would only account for about 1% of the service's audience — not enough to make Sony reconsider its strategy.