Shuhei Yoshida, former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, has weighed in on Sony's plan to end physical disc production for new games from 2028 onwards, and his take is probably not what disc defenders were hoping to hear.
Yoshida, who left Sony early last year and was therefore not involved in the decision, admits he had no prior knowledge of the plan. "I didn't know they were planning that," he said in a recent interview. But rather than pushing back on the move, he largely shrugged it off, positioning himself as a personal data point for why digital is fine: “I'm a totally digital consumer. I don't want to manage discs or swap discs. I want all my games on my dashboard, and I just select a game and play it.”
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The patch argument and where it falls short
Here's the thing: Yoshida's core argument is that physical discs are already a partial fiction. "Even with physical disc games, in most cases, developers are constantly updating and adding game data anyway," he said. "Anyone who chooses to purchase a physical version will still need to download new patches, DLC, or updates. So, not having a disc, I don't understand if it's such a big issue."
The logic has a surface-level appeal, especially for anyone who has popped in a disc only to sit through a multi-gigabyte day-one patch before touching the game. Modern releases from big studios often ship with mandatory updates that dwarf what's on the disc itself, and games launching in 2026 can easily require 50GB or more of additional data on top of the physical install.
But the data tells a more complicated story. The preservation community over at DoesItPlay, which tests physical games for offline playability, has checked over 3,500 physical releases. Their findings: 73% of those games require zero additional download to function. Only around 10% fall into the most severe category, where essential content is missing from the disc entirely or bugs make the game unplayable without a patch. That's a meaningful chunk of games, but it's far from the majority, and it directly contradicts the idea that physical media is already functionally equivalent to digital.
What Yoshida actually got right
To his credit, Yoshida didn't dismiss every concern. He acknowledged that collectors lose something real here, and floated the idea that publishers could still offer collector's editions with a code-in-a-box format, pointing to the approach taken with certain high-profile releases as a possible template. He also recognized the second-hand market impact directly: "For those people who choose to buy or sell games, the lack of discs may become an issue."
On pricing concerns, he suggested that digital sales would fill the gap for budget-conscious players, arguing that publishers and platforms would continue offering discounted prices for those who can't pay full price at launch. That's a reasonable bet given how aggressively digital storefronts have run sales in recent years, though it does sidestep the fact that a used physical copy often gets cheaper faster and more predictably than a digital sale.
Sony isn't budging, and the backlash isn't fading
Sony's CFO Lin Tao has already stated the company doesn't "see that there will be any negative impact on our business," despite acknowledging the strong public reaction against the decision. That corporate confidence hasn't landed well. A recent Phantom Blade Zero State of Play left comments open and got flooded with "no disc no buy" messages, a sentiment that has spread across PlayStation's social channels and YouTube videos consistently since the announcement.
The disc debate also carries weight beyond PlayStation. With Sony committing to an all-digital future, observers have noted it could heavily influence how Nintendo and Xbox approach physical media going forward, particularly as console generations turn over.
For players planning big upcoming PS5 releases and thinking about storage and download logistics, it's worth checking preload and file size details for titles like Saros with our Saros file size and pre-load date guide or the upcoming Pragmata with our Pragmata game size and preload date guide, since managing storage is only going to become more relevant as physical options disappear. For everything else launching soon, our gaming guides hub has you covered on preloads, file sizes, and launch prep across platforms.
