The Console Market Has Reached Maturity: Dropping Discs Became Part of PlayStation's New Earning Strategy — Jason Schreier

Sony's decision to stop releasing new PlayStation games on discs (https://gamemag.ru/news/200071/sony-prekrashhaet-vypusk-igr-na-diskakh--s-yanvarya-2028-goda-vse-novinki-playstation-budut-tolko-cz) is part of a wider commercial pivot aimed at extracting more revenue from the current user base, Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier argues.

Schreier frames the move against a backdrop of a matured console market. Where the industry once expanded from a few million players in the early 1980s to hundreds of millions by the 2000s, growth has slowed and new platforms such as VR and cloud gaming have not delivered a large influx of fresh players. Schreier and industry colleagues estimate that the ceiling for the console audience today is roughly 150 million people.

That constraint has influenced Sony’s outlook. The PlayStation 5 has sold more than 90 million units, and the company reports about 125 million active users in its ecosystem. As a result, Sony “no longer expects significant hardware sales growth and focuses on regular revenues from current PlayStation owners,” Schreier notes.

One clear tactic in that strategy is a full shift to digital distribution. Digital sales avoid the costs of producing discs, packaging and shipping, and sales through the PlayStation Store mean Sony does not have to share as large a cut with retail partners. Schreier summarized the financial logic behind the transition:

“We have reached a point where companies need to earn more actively from individual users and get more money from them. The transition from physical copies to digital is one way to increase profits.”

Schreier expects the disappearance of discs to be only one part of a broader monetization push. Potential next steps include higher PlayStation Plus subscription prices, expanded use of microtransactions, and a stronger focus on “service” games engineered to generate ongoing spending from players.

Schreier referred to Circana analyst Matt Piscatella, who recently predicted that in a mature console market, new products and solutions will increasingly be created with the goal of extracting more money from the existing audience.

For many players, these changes are unwelcome. Schreier relays the industry sentiment:

“Many players already feel that the industry is trying to squeeze money out of them by all possible means. When the industry can no longer attract millions of new people but companies are still obliged to show growth annually, they have to increase monetization of current users.”

Schreier himself primarily plays on PC and Steam Deck and sometimes on Nintendo Switch 2, preferring digital purchases for their convenience. Still, he recognizes why collectors and fans of physical releases are upset: without discs they lose the ability to buy used copies, trade, resell games, or encounter decades-old titles at bargain prices.

He also points out that Sony is not unique in searching for new revenue models; the entire paid-games sector faces rising development budgets combined with limited audience growth.

However, Sony is the first in the console world to take the radical step of completely abandoning disc game releases.

Read also: Sony: Reasonable PlayStation console owners have always understood they do not own the digital games they buy.