We all knew it was coming eventually, but Sony has been plugging physical games much faster than many expected. Sony announced today that it will cease all production of physical games from January 2028, and new games released after that date will remain digital only. It is basically killed by the physical market and people are not happy about it.
However, while it absolutely blows and hurts the industry as a whole, it does give us a pretty good insight into what Sony's plans are for the next generation of consoles. For example, industry analysts at Ampere believe that this “almost certainly guarantees that the PS6 will arrive in 2028 at the earliest”.
We probably won't get the PS6 until late 2028
That's according to analyst Piers Harding-Rolls, who also claimed in an interview with VGC that we're unlikely to get the PS6 until at least the end of 2028, despite earlier claims that the consoles could launch in 2027. He also states that the PS6 won't have a disc drive “as a minimum” as Sony looks to cut production costs for its next-gen console wherever possible.
“Sony will be looking for every way to reduce the cost of its next-gen console, and this is an easy win,” says Harding-Rolls. “It is possible that an additional disc drive could be made available to play older PS4 and PS5 games on disc.”
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Harding-Rolls also believes that Sony could implement some sort of physical-digital backwards compatibility program to ease the concerns of upset fans and allow people to use physical discs of existing games to obtain digital licenses. It's an idea that's been floated around a lot and could become a necessity once physical media is wiped out.
While nothing Harding-Rolls said is confirmed, it all makes sense. It's hard to see Sony releasing a new console right before phasing out traditional physical media, and we know both PlayStation and Xbox are aiming to release consoles around the holiday season. But this all but confirms a PS6 release in late 2028, although it remains to be seen whether people will actually be excited about a $1,000-plus console without a disc drive whenever that rolls around.
- Mark
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Sony
- Original release date
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November 12, 2020
- Original MSRP (USD)
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$499, €499, £449, ¥49,980 (base) // $399, €399, £359, ¥39,980 (digital),
- Operating system
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OS Orbis
- Processor
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Custom 8-core AMD Zen 2
- Resolution
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720p – 8K
