It took 30 days of anger and furor for a Sony representative to finally acknowledge the backlash to its announcement of killing physical media in 2028, but there is no good news to report on the subject.
During an earnings call today, Sony chief financial officer Lin Tao was asked about the hugely controversial decision during a Q&A segment, and she had a lot to say with very little substance on the matter. But the gist is this: the company doesn’t appear to be changing its mind about it.
“There are various reasons we made this decision, the biggest being that the digitalization of content overall has been progressing, that’s the big factor,” Tao said through an interpreter. “It’s not just for PlayStation, but for all kinds of content, digitalization is progressing. And so when we think about the future—and we put in a lot of thought and time, and we cautiously considered this—and we came to this conclusion, and we’re going to cautiously move this forward.”
On the subject of PlayStation’s social media being flooded with angry comments at every turn since the July 1 news, Tao said “we have received various opinions and people have strong views, and we understand that the community has put forth those views to us.”
“Games are loved by many people,” she continued. “It’s a form of entertainment that’s loved by people, and it’s connected to people’s fond memories in many cases. And so we understand those emotions. We want to consider that. And in the future digital ecosystem, how do we engage the gamers is something that we would like to continue to explore.”
Players have been hoping that their loud voices would maybe cause some decision-making behind the scenes, but it sure sounds like Sony is not going to be swayed. This shouldn’t really come as a surprise, but a disappointment? Yeah.
And of course, in the end, it is all about money: in the same financial report session, Sony reported that from April through June 2026, its digital games revenue was $1.2 billion, while its physical games revenue was just $128 million. This could easily be blamed on the fact that the move away from physical media has already been happening gradually over the last few years, but this is all the explanation Sony needs to soothe investors.
“At this point in time, we are not seeing any impact on our business, as of now… a large part is already digitized,” Tao said. “And therefore as a result the discontinuation of discs, we don’t see that there will be any negative impact on our business. However, as I already said, the users, the players have attachments and we have to think about how to respond to those feedbacks.”
And so, for now, it seems like Sony views the anger on social media as a loud minority as it plans to move forward with the destruction of physical media in about a year and a half. React accordingly.
