Sony’s 10 Percent Disc Cut Leaves New Games Digital

Sony’s disc unit says PlayStation disc output will fall by 10 percent in 2028, not crash to a tenth of current levels. The note, from Sony Digital Audio Disc Corporation after July remarks by DADC chief Dietmar Tanzer were read as a 90 percent collapse, covers catalog reprints. New games still lose their discs in January 2028.

That is a real change in the reprint scare and no change at all in the cutoff shops actually sell through. PlayStation still plans to stop pressing discs for new first-party and third-party games on that date, and the last in-house plant is already training people to make microlenses instead.

A 10 Percent Drop, Not a 90 Percent Collapse

When Tanzer spoke to an Austrian broadcaster in July about the Thalgau plant, coverage treated his volume talk as a fall to 10 percent of today’s output. A Sony DADC spokesperson later told interviewers the other reading was the intended one.

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.

Sony DADC spokesperson

That figure covers 2028. Tanzer did not put a number on the years after, and the spokesperson would not add one. Reprints of games already on disc are still supposed to ship after the cutoff. “So, there will be reorders going to the market after January 2028,” the spokesperson said, then pointed further questions at PlayStation, which did not comment.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The 2028 cut: DADC now describes an overall product-volume decline of 10 percent that year, not a drop to 10 percent of current output.
• Catalog reorders: Games already released, or still due on disc before January 2028, remain eligible for fresh pressings after that month.
• New SKUs: PlayStation still ends discs for all new console games from January 2028, first-party and third-party alike.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• After 2028: DADC offered no volume target for 2029 and beyond.
• Reorder rules: Minimum runs, pricing, and which catalog titles still qualify were sent to PlayStation, which stayed silent.
• Outside plants: There is no public plan to license the PlayStation disc process to anyone else.

Collectors hunting another pressing of Bloodborne, God of War Ragnarök, or Astro Bot got the less ugly number. Anyone waiting for a 2028 launch on a silver disc did not.

New Games Still Lose Their Discs in 2028

Sid Shuman, senior director of content communications at Sony Interactive Entertainment, posted the policy on 1 July 2026. Physical disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting January 2028, he wrote, with new titles sold on PlayStation Store and at shops in digital formats only.

This is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs. This transition will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today.

Sid Shuman, Senior Director, Content Communications, PlayStation Blog, 1 July 2026

The same post said the shift does not touch games that already shipped on disc, or that still will before that month. A later partner note to publishers repeated that they “will still be able to place re-orders for existing PlayStation disc games,” and that Sony will “provide publishers with the opportunity to release new games at retail using digital codes.”

Sony has said digital accounted for about 80 percent of full-game software sales in its last financial year. Circana’s retail tracking, through the end of May 2026, put disc-less PlayStation 5 hardware at 27 percent of consoles sold, against 52 percent of Xbox Series machines. The July blog post still drew 9,207 comments, most of them hostile, and the company has not rewritten the January date.

THE CUTOFF CALENDAR

1. December 2024: Thalgau is already trialling optical microlenses on disc-like substrates.
2. 1 July 2026: PlayStation says new-game disc pressing ends in January 2028; catalog discs are carved out.
3. July 2026: Tanzer discusses Thalgau volume; 300 staff are told the site will retool.
4. 23-30 August 2026: Video Games Plus and others run a seven-day PlayStation blackout.
5. 4 September 2026: DADC says 2028 volume falls by 10 percent, not to 10 percent.
6. January 2028: New PlayStation games leave shops as downloads or codes; old titles can still be reordered.

Read as a sequence, the 10 percent note arrives more than two months after the cutoff was locked, and after the plant had already been told to change jobs.

Thalgau Is Retraining 300 People for Lenses

Thalgau, near Salzburg, is where Sony DADC is based and, after years of closures, the group’s last wholly owned disc plant. Tanzer said the lines turn out 600,000 discs a day, about half of them for PlayStation. New Jersey pressing ended in 2011, and Indiana’s remaining disc work moved here in 2022.

THALGAU IN FIGURES

• Daily output: 600,000 discs, with PlayStation taking about half the volume.
• Headcount: 300 people, with no layoffs announced when the retooling was described in July.
• New work: €30 million into optical microlenses, with mass production possible as early as 2027.
• Old work: DADC says it has pressed more than 26.4 billion discs in total, including 23 billion discs in Terre Haute between 1983 and 2022.

The new product is not a game. Microlenses sit in camera sensors, headsets, fibre links, and cars; the micro-optics chief gave the example of a turn signal thrown onto asphalt. Up to 60 of those lenses fit on one disc-shaped wafer, which is how a press shop becomes a photonics shop without throwing the round substrate away.

A 10 percent dip in 2028 disc volume is compatible with a plant whose main future is already those wafers. It is much harder to square with a long, open-ended reprint business for every old PlayStation SKU, which is why the missing post-2028 number still hangs over catalog games even after the scare number was walked back.

What Happens to Shops After January 2028?

Physical stores do not live on Bloodborne restocks. They live on launch week, when a new box is the reason someone walks in. After January 2028 that box, if it exists, is likely to hold a download code, the same pattern Rockstar set for Grand Theft Auto 6 on 19 November 2026.

Sony told publisher partners that new games will still have a retail path through those codes. Some shops have already said a code is not a copy they will put on a shelf.

WHAT A SHOP CAN STILL SELL

• Catalog discs: Reorders of titles that shipped, or still will ship, on disc before January 2028, against a 10 percent volume decline that year and no stated figure after.
• Code boxes: New 2028 games offered as packaged digital codes, which Sony has described as the remaining shop format.
• Hard refusals: Video Games Plus in Canada and Loot Box Gaming in the United States said they will not stock Grand Theft Auto 6 if the boxed edition is only a code, a line other independents can copy when PlayStation titles arrive the same way.

Jon Gibson, co-owner and co-creative director of collector publisher iam8bit, said his company “would absolutely love to find a way forward to continue making physical PlayStation games” and called true ownership the point of the format. Boutique steelbooks do not replace the weekly chart copy that pays a high-street lease, and a 10 percent reprint trim does not put a 2028 exclusive in a jewel case.

Sony Keeps the Disc Press In-House

Microsoft does not stamp Xbox discs itself. Publishers select an Authorized Replicator in Partner Center, send a bill of materials worked up with a Microsoft contact, and press under a licence Microsoft can revoke. Sony never opened that door. PlayStation discs go through DADC, and the process is proprietary.

WHO MAY PRESS A CONSOLE DISC

Shawn Layden, former chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, called a disc-free PlayStation future “depressing, but solvable,” then added “I think.” The hurdle, he said, is that nobody else can press a PlayStation disc unless Sony licenses the method, 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.” Nobody he knew was in those talks, and PlayStation did not answer whether it would take them.

No Disc, No Buy Did Not Move the Date

The slogan attached itself to every PlayStation post that would take a reply. During the early September State of Play it filled the live comments. On 8 September, the day after the 10 percent note was widely written up, the same three words were still being dropped under unrelated PlayStation threads. The reprint math did not read, to those users, as a restored disc format.

Video Games Plus, the Canadian shop that also refused the GTA 6 code box, framed a seven-day PlayStation blackout for 23-30 August 2026 and counted 496 days from that start to 1 January 2028, the first day of the no-new-discs era.

496 Days.⏳

The PlayStation Blackout movement against Sony’s plan to end physical media has started! August 23-30.

If you believe physical games deserve a future, now is the time to take a stand. 💿 #PlayStationBlackout #SavePhysicalGaming pic.twitter.com/L2qPLyvNm2

— VGP Video Games Plus (@VideoGamesPlus_) August 23, 2026

A week of dark consoles cannot reverse a plant conversion that was already on video in December 2024. The sharper split inside the protest is follow-through. In late August, people in the same argument asked whether “No disc, no buy” meant anything if Grand Theft Auto 6 stayed on pre-order lists, digital or boxed-as-code. Hardware did not pause for the campaign either. The cutoff Sony has to defend is still a software one in January 2028, and catalog reprints at 90 percent of prior volume do not give a boycott a new-release disc to rally around.

The Store Keeps $21 on a $70 Game

Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad wrote on the day of the July announcement that stopping discs is a platform-led choice, meant to cut costs, wipe out the used market, and pull spending into PlayStation Store. The arithmetic is blunt. On a Sony keeps $21 on a $70 game sold through the Store; at retail, he said, it earns about half that.

Layden, who spent 32 years at Sony, described the same choice as a spreadsheet. Digital, he said, can look like 80 percent of the opportunity and 95 percent of the revenue, at which point the remaining slice is easy to switch off. He did not think that should have been the test. Limited editions at higher prices still sell, he argued, and taking the format away from the most devoted fans is a brand cost the ledger rarely prices.

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.’ Then you take a note and say, OK, how much of that can we live with?

Shawn Layden, former chairman, SIE Worldwide Studios

He also asked the ownership question the Store model never quite answers. “If you can’t resell it, do you really own it?” A 10 percent reprint trim keeps some of those resale copies in circulation through 2028. It does not put a new PlayStation game back on a disc, and PlayStation still has not said how long even the old ones will keep coming once Thalgau’s main product is a lens.