A 350,000-signature petition and a week-long blackout have not moved Sony’s January 2028 date
Speaking through an interpreter on the company’s FY26 Q1 earnings call on July 31, CFO Lin Tao confirmed that disc manufacturing still stops in January 2028 and that Sony will “cautiously move this forward. Sony announced the cutoff in a PlayStation blog post on July 1, saying new games after that date would be sold digitally only, with already-released titles unaffected. Sony’s FY26 Q1 pulled in $1.2 billion from digital game revenue against just $128 million from physical, a gap of more than nine times. Circana analyst Mat Piscatella’s data is starker still: 100 PlayStation games moved over 100,000 physical units in the first half of 2008, compared with seven in the first half of 2026.
Since then, a Change.org petition titled “Don’t Kill the Disc” has crossed 350,000 signatures, and preservation group DoesItPlay has organised #PSBlackout, a week-long boycott running August 23 to 30 that asks players to stop logging in, playing or buying anything on Sony platforms. Asked directly about the financial damage, corporate communications executive Ishii said Sony sees none, since sales are already largely digitised, though he conceded players have attachments the company must respond to. Sony has broken a month of near-silence on the death of the PlayStation disc, and the answer to everyone shouting at it is essentially no. ” The confirmation lands after four weeks of organised anger. Tao’s stated reason was the broad shift to digital across all content, not just PlayStation, and the balance sheet backs her up bluntly. Tao struck a softer note, saying games are connected to people’s fond memories and that Sony understands those emotions.
Sony’s answer on how a disc-less PS6 differs from a gaming PC comes down to price and curation
Sony has reportedly begun repurposing its disc factory to produce optical microlenses. The die, as they say, is cast.