Sony has pushed back on a wave of reports suggesting PlayStation disc manufacturing is about to be gutted by 90 percent after comments from a Sony DADC executive were allegedly misunderstood.
According to Game, which went directly to Sony Digital Audio Disc Corporation (DADC) for clarity, output is actually expected to dip by 10 percent in 2028, not to 10 percent.
“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,” a Sony DADC spokesperson told Game, referring to comments made by DADC chief Dietmar Tanzer to an Austrian broadcaster in July.
The spokesperson didn’t say what happens beyond 2028, and directed further questions on reorders to PlayStation’s own PR team, which didn’t respond to Game’s queries.
The confusion stems from PlayStation’s July announcement that it will stop producing physical discs for new games from January 2028 onward, though already-released titles and games still slated for disc release before that date aren’t affected, and reorders will continue afterwards.
Unlike Microsoft, which certifies third-party “Authorised Replicators” to press Xbox discs under its publisher agreements, Sony keeps disc manufacturing in-house, running it through DADC rather than opening the process up to outside plants.
Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad posited that cutting discs kills the resale market outright and pulls spending straight into the PlayStation Store, where Sony’s margins are considerably better than they are on a retail sale.
Shawn Layden, the former chairman of SIE Worldwide Studios, told Game a disc-free future for PlayStation is “depressing, but solvable”, though he said he doesn’t have “line of sight on the particulars” of any potential licensing deal.
He compared the situation to other physical media formats that outlasted predictions of their demise. “No one ever saw the comeback of cassette tape. And vinyl didn’t so much come back. The flame went down, the fire’s dying, but the ember was always there, and it just kind of came back. Much like the book business. We thought we’d all be on Kindles right now”.
For Layden, collecting is core to what makes someone a gamer in the first place. “Did you get all the diamonds in Crash Bandicoot? Did you get all the stars in Mario? And we like to collect our games. And we have a game shelf. And we put all our boxes up there. And if you’re super hardcore, when you buy a game, you buy two copies, right? One stays in the shrink wrap, and you play the other one.
“You know, we buy the steelbook and the three-disc Final Fantasy set and the figurine and, you know, you can’t download any of that. What happens to that?”
He argued that decisions like this get treated as pure financial calculations when they shouldn’t be.
“Someone also has to have a ledger there saying, ‘OK, what is the brand impact from that move?'” he said. “If we do that, dollars and cents work out. I get it. That’s just math. But what’s the brand impact? Are people going to say, ‘Good move, you guys?’ Or are they going to say, ‘We hate you guys. Quit doing that.’ And sometimes they say, ‘We hate you’.”
He added: “I see a lot of companies making decisions which, objectively speaking, I don’t know what the dollar end of that was for you, Mr. Company, but your brand value just dropped 30 percent. So I hope it was worth it”.
On the broader shift away from physical ownership, Layden was blunt. “What does ownership mean anymore? It’s a genuine question. Well, in fact, it’s not even a question anymore. It’s like you are shifting the model from ownership to accessibility.
“You’ve never been able to sell your iTunes library. And you can’t sell your PlayStation download library. So if you can’t resell it, do you really own it?”
Boutique publisher iam8bit, known for collector’s editions, told Game it would “absolutely love to find a way forward to continue making physical PlayStation games”.
One possible route floated in the piece is Conectiv Supply Chain Solutions, a Memphis-based disc manufacturer formed in 2025 that recently acquired Universal and Warner Bros’ home entertainment distributor SDS, though Game reported it hadn’t heard back from the company or its CEO by the time of publication.
Earlier this week, messages like “NO DISC NO BUY” and “WE WANT DESTINY 3” were spammed during the State of Play, from start to finish, in the YouTube live chat. Popping over the Twitch, that stream was endlessly spammed by Destiny emotes, and similar calls for physical game support.
This outrage is a collision between two separate PR disasters for Sony. The first is tied to Sony’s announcement that physical game support will stop starting in 2028, meaning only digital codes will be available for games on its platform starting in January of that year. The second controversy stems from the end of major support for Destiny 2 and major staffing cuts at Bungie.
