Sony forces the end of discs despite selling millions of copies

The corporate behavior of the console manufacturer sparked a heated debate over the control of the game distribution market. The controversy gained traction after market analyst Daniel Ahmad highlighted consolidated data on the commercial transactions within the ecosystem, indicating that disc format accounted for no less than 20% of the total revenue of Sony's gaming division. The official financial statements show that the company moved an impressive 70 million physical media units globally between April 2025 and March 2026. Forcing the demise of a format that still places tens of millions of boxes on store shelves and generates massive revenue seems like a greedy maneuver to monopolize prices in the online store and remove the consumer's right to resale.

The decline of the disc market, however, is evident when compared to the recent history of the brand itself. This total of 70 million tangible copies represents a significant drop compared to the previous period, from April 2024 to March 2025, when PS5 and PS4 owners consumed over 120 million physical media units. Even with this notable reduction of 50 million units from one year to the next, the remaining volume serves as irrefutable proof that a huge portion of the gaming community rejects the model of intangible virtual licenses and insists on owning the product physically.

Given this aggressive transition promoted by the brands, communication channels launched a public consultation to gauge consumer sentiment on the direction of the sector, raising the following opinions among voters:

Very negative: PlayStation has lost its identity and direction

Concerning: They've made serious mistakes, but they can still recover

Understandable: It's just the harsh reality of the current market

Positive: I fully trust in the strategy and the major studios.

The expert used the visibility of the debate to debunk some distorted information circulating online. Daniel Ahmad noted that internal reports from the developer Insomniac, which leaked online after a criminal cyber attack on the producer, are outdated and do not reflect the current retail reality. The consultant explained a technical aspect of the company's accounting: the multinational counts special bundles that include the device along with a digital redemption code as physical sales, in addition to recording the stock dispatched to retailer inventories rather than the final purchase made by the consumer.

The scenario appears even more challenging for collectors when we consider the direct competition, where Xbox already reports a digital consumption rate exceeding 90% in its regular transactions. To make matters worse, half of all installed base consoles of the current generation from the Japanese line run without native disc readers from the factory. In the face of these walled ecosystems, the analyst categorizes the extinction of physical media as an inevitable evolution of the technology industry, although he admits that the giant owning the brand is accelerating and artificially inducing this process to lock users into their own sales platforms.