Sony's industry-changing decision to stop producing PlayStation discs from January 2028 has gamers still reeling from the consequences. The future of console gaming looks inevitably digital-only, both for the PlayStation 6 and, if rumors are to be believed, for the next Xbox console, too.
Even if digital sales now account for over 80% of the total, there's still a fairly sizable user base that purchases retail, and they obviously aren't happy with this choice. Kotaku pointed out that fans have been voicing their opinions loudly across the Internet, as shown by the thousands of angry replies to a seemingly unrelated tweet (about the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day movie) posted on the official Sony X account.
Several PlayStation fans have also predictably started petitions on Change.org, though the largest such petition was actually submitted by Canadian retailer PNP Games and now accounts for nearly 30,000 signatures. Will this outrage influence Sony in any way, though?
That seems highly unlikely, especially since factories are already being repurposed away from making PlayStation discs. Confirmation of this came from Austria's national public broadcaster, ORF, which reports that the Sony plant in Thalgau will be heavily affected. Dietmar Tanzer, CEO of Sony DADC, said in a statement:
PlayStation currently accounts for approximately 50 percent of our volume, and of that, approximately 20 percent are new orders. We are talking about roughly ten percent of the volume in 2028.
The good news is that no layoffs of the manufacturing plant's 300 employees are currently planned. The flip side is that they're already being trained to work on manufacturing optical microlenses, with mass production planned to start in early 2027. This suggests Sony has been planning the switch away from physical discs for quite some time, and, as such, it's far-fetched to imagine how Internet backlash could affect these plans in any way.
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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