Although Sony has announced that it plans to stop the production of physical discs for PlayStation games due to "changes in consumer trends," it currently still imposes purchase and supply restrictions on external optical drives. On July 1, Sony officially announced that it will officially stop producing PlayStation game discs starting in January 2028. At that time, new games on the platform will only be released in digital versions. It is worth noting that PlayStation games will still be sold in offline retail channels, but they will no longer come with physical discs. This news basically confirms that the PS6 console will not be equipped with an optical drive.
However, just three days later, players discovered that the market demand for physical optical drives was still very strong, and the official PlayStation store had to continue to implement the "limit one purchase per order" sales rule.
The store has updated an "Important Notice" on the product page: "Starting from January 2028, new games on the PlayStation platform will only be sold in digital form in the PlayStation Store and retail channels. Game discs released before January 2028 can still be run on this console."
As a netizen on the ResetEra forum commented: "If this wasn't so embarrassing, it would be quite funny."
It should be noted that this is not the latest change - some netizens pointed out that this prompt has been online at least in November 2023. But this also reflects that the market demand for physical media is still considerable, so much so that Sony has had to continue to restrict the purchase of external optical drives for several years.
Previously, it was reported that Microsoft will also follow Sony's strategy, and its Helix plan console will also not have a built-in optical drive; however, other rumors indicate that Microsoft is developing related solutions that can grant digital licenses to corresponding games to players who already own physical discs.