Sony Polls Publishers Who Cannot Press PlayStation Discs Elsewhere

Sony has been asking PlayStation publishers how they sell games on disc, according to a leak, months after it set a hard stop on new discs for January 2028. The questionnaire has been treated as a crack in that plan. The names on the mailing list are the studios that still have to book every PlayStation pressing at Sony’s own plant.

Tom, host of the YouTube channel Moore’s Law Is Dead, told the Broken Silicon podcast his contacts described “a bigger survey than they’ve sent almost ever before, if not ever before,” with a question that asked, “in a not-direct way,” whether there was “any issue with how we sell games physically.” Sony has not confirmed that the questionnaire exists. The January 2028 date has not moved.

New PlayStation Games Lose Discs in January 2028

Sid Shuman, senior director of content communications at Sony Interactive Entertainment, put the policy on the PlayStation Blog on July 1, 2026. Physical disc production for all new PlayStation console games would be discontinued starting January 2028. After that date, new titles would go out on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only. Games that had already shipped on disc, or that still had a disc SKU dated before that month, would not be pulled.

The company called the shift a response to “consumer preferences,” and said digital already “significantly outpaces” discs. Partners were later told they could still reorder those older disc SKUs after January 2028, and that Sony would offer a way to put new digital games on retail shelves, including boxed codes.

THE DISC CALENDAR SONY HAS ACTUALLY SET

1. July 1, 2026: PlayStation publishes the stop on new-game disc production from January 2028, with earlier disc SKUs left in place.
2. July 5, 2026: Hideo Kojima tells an audience at Il Cinema in Piazza in Italy he is “really sad” about the end of production and “frightened” of a streaming future in which the files no longer sit on a player’s hardware.
3. July 31, 2026: CFO Lin Tao tells investors Sony will “cautiously move this forward,” and that she is not seeing a hit to the business.
4. Late August 2026: CD Projekt Red joint-CEO Michał Nowakowski, speaking at Gamescom, says his studio has “no influence” on first-party disc factories and cannot promise a PlayStation disc for The Witcher 4.
5. Early September 2026: A Sony DADC spokesperson says 2028 plant volume is expected to fall by 10 percent, not down to 10 percent, and that reorders will still go to market after January 2028.
6. September 15, 2026: Marvel’s Wolverine launches on PS5. Alinea Analytics later puts three-day sales at 1.9 million copies and $130 million, with 22.9% of that revenue from physical copies.
7. September 23, 2026: Tom of Moore’s Law Is Dead describes the partner survey. Sony does not confirm it.

That sequence is a managed rundown, not a pause. Tao had already told the earnings call that “digitalisation of contents overall has been progressing,” that the firm had “cautiously considered this,” and that it would keep going.

Sony Still Owns the Only Press

Microsoft lets outside plants press Xbox discs. Sony does not. PlayStation discs run through Sony Digital Audio Disc Corporation, the in-house unit that still operates the Thalgau plant in Austria. Shawn Layden, former chairman of SIE Worldwide Studios, now a game-industry advisor, called a future without physical PlayStation discs “depressing, but solvable,” then added the catch that sits under every partner complaint.

And unless they decide or determine a way to license that to some of these bespoke disc manufacturers, there’s no way to make it happen.

Shawn Layden, former chairman of SIE Worldwide Studios, speaking to Brian Crecente

Xbox’s own publishing docs still walk partners through that other model: Xbox publishers pick an Authorized Replicator, file a bill of materials, and get discs from a certified plant. No one Layden’s interviewer spoke with said they were in talks with Sony to copy that license. PlayStation did not answer questions about whether it would.

Jon Gibson, co-owner and co-creative director of collector publisher iam8bit, said the company would “absolutely love to find a way forward to continue making physical PlayStation games.” Love is not a stamper. Until Sony licenses the process, a boutique steelbook and a 2028 blockbuster both wait in the same queue at DADC.

Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad put the platform math in plain dollars on the day of the announcement. On a $70 third-party game sold through PlayStation Store, Sony keeps $21, which is 30 percent. Sold at retail, he said, it earns about half that. Killing new discs also shuts the used-game loop for those SKUs and routes the spend back through a store Sony owns.

22.9% of Wolverine’s Opening Cash Came From Discs

The consumer-preference line is real on the average SKU and thinner on the games Sony actually puts on a billboard. Rhys Elliott, head of market analysis at Alinea Analytics, estimated Marvel’s Wolverine sold through 1.9 million copies in its first three days, generating $130 million, with 1 million of those copies from digital pre-orders before launch. Physical editions still accounted for 22.9% of that revenue. Sony has not posted its own figure.

Alinea’s earlier splits on other PlayStation Studios hits sat even higher on plastic.

ALINEA’S PHYSICAL SHARE ON RECENT PLAYSTATION HITS

Those boxed copies are the exception that still prints money, not the rule that sets Sony’s P&L. For the fiscal year ended March 31, 2026, digital downloads were 78 percent of Sony’s full-game unit purchases. In the quarter ended June 30, 2026, the full-game digital download ratio was 82 percent. Circana analyst Mat Piscatella said 100 PlayStation games topped 100,000 physical units in the first half of 2008; seven did so in the first half of 2026.

Sony’s Game and Network Services first-quarter results showed ¥937.1 billion in sales and ¥202 billion in operating income. Physical software in that quarter generated ¥20.5 billion ($128 million). Digital software and add-on content accounted for ¥485.2 billion. Tao said the firm had not seen the disc decision dent the business, “because a large part is already digitized.”

Why the Survey Went to Developers, Not Players

The public fight has been loud, with “No Disc, No Buy” still attached to every trailer comment section. The questionnaire Tom described did not go to that crowd. It went to the people who fill purchase orders at DADC, the only plant that can still turn a PlayStation master into a shop SKU.

That is a different inbox from a customer poll. A studio can tell Sony that a 2028 disc SKU is still worth the lead time, or that digital margin and a later gold date are the better trade. A player posting through a launch livestream cannot book a stamper. Reading the survey as a gift to retail customers skips the part where those customers were not asked.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The cutoff: New PlayStation game discs are scheduled to stop with titles releasing from January 2028.
• The plant: Sony DADC expects overall product volume to decline by 10 percent in 2028, and says reorders of older disc games will still ship after that month.
• The lock: PlayStation discs are pressed in-house. Third parties cannot take a PS SKU to an outside replicator the way Xbox partners can.
• The hits: Alinea’s three-day Wolverine estimate still put 22.9% of revenue on physical copies.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The survey: Only Tom’s unnamed contacts have described it. Sony has not confirmed the mailing, the questions, or the size.
• Any change to January 2028: No partner note, blog post, or earnings line has walked the new-game date back.
• Licensed pressing: There is no public offer to let iam8bit, CD Projekt Red, or anyone else press PlayStation discs outside DADC.

If the questionnaire is real, it can still come back as cover for the original plan. Partners who already make more per digital copy have a reason to bless the cutoff. Partners who still need Japan, gift-season boxes, and collector SKUs have a reason to push for more stamper time before January 2028, not for a new factory they will never get.

The Witcher 4 Box May Arrive Without a Disc

CD Projekt Red is the cleanest example of that bind. The Witcher 4 is aiming at a 2028 release, which puts a PlayStation disc on the wrong side of Sony’s date if the date holds. Nowakowski told The Game Business at Gamescom that the studio knows what PlayStation has announced and cannot rewrite it.

We have no influence on the policies of the first parties. The discs for the first parties, including PlayStation, have to be manufactured in their own factories. So, if they stop manufacturing indeed by 2028, then yes [we won’t have a disc].

Michał Nowakowski, joint-CEO, CD Projekt Red, at Gamescom

He still promised a box. “We’re going to have a box that’s going to have some feelies in it,” he said. “Something you’re going to be wanting to open up and enjoy.” That is the GTA 6 path in slower motion: cardboard, paper, maybe a code, and no laser-readable game if DADC will not press one.

Kojima’s July remarks sit on a different worry. He said he had been buying Blu-rays and CDs because he “grew up with physical media.” Downloads at least leave the files on a console, he said. Streaming would not. “There are companies that own these servers and let you ‘turn the tap’ for a monthly fee,” he told the Italian audience. “If there is a change, the data inside will stop being distributed.” He had already written a version of that fear years earlier: if you cannot keep the files, you become a have-not.

Layden asked the retail version of the same question. “If you can’t resell it, do you really own it?” Special editions, he argued, already sell at a higher rate than the $69.99 box. The market had not stopped buying them. Sony had stopped wanting to make them.

A 10% Cut Leaves the Catalog Running

The September clarification at DADC is the piece most of the survey chatter skips. Dietmar Tanzer, the DADC chief, had spoken to an Austrian broadcaster in July in terms that some write-ups read as a collapse to one-tenth of output. A DADC spokesperson later said Tanzer “anticipated an overall product volume decline by 10 percent, not a decline down to 10 percent.” That figure covers 2028. The spokesperson would not talk about the years after it, and sent reorder questions to PlayStation PR, which did not answer.

Ten percent off a catalog-and-reorder plant is not a padlock on the door. It is a smaller press run for games that already qualified, while new 2028 SKUs wait outside.

WHAT STILL GETS A PLAYSTATION DISC

• New games from January 2028: Digital on PlayStation Store and at retail, with no new disc masters.
• Older disc SKUs: Publishers can still place reorders after January 2028, according to DADC.
• The factory: Volume is expected down 10 percent in 2028, which leaves most of the current output still running on catalog work.
• Boxed digital: Partners were told Sony will offer a retail path for new games that do not get a disc, including codes in a box.
• Outside plants: Still closed. There is no licensed replicator list for PlayStation.

A survey sent into that split can change how many 2027 SKUs get a fat first press, or how loudly a Witcher-scale publisher complains on the record. It cannot, by itself, open Thalgau to a third-party stamper. Tao already told investors the firm would move the plan forward. The leak that Sony asked its captive suppliers how the remaining physical window feels does not rewrite that line. It names who still has to live with the plant Sony kept.