Sony’s 10 Percent Disc Drop Leaves the 2028 Cutoff Intact

Sony DADC says disc output will fall by 10 percent in 2028, not to 10 percent. The correction landed on September 4, 2026, after July remarks by DADC chief Dietmar Tanzer were read as a 90 percent cut.

The January 2028 stop on discs for new PlayStation games did not change. Leftover presses will still run reprints, plus music and movie discs, while the last Sony-owned plant retrains for microlenses.

A 10 Percent Drop, Not a Collapse

Tanzer spoke on July 1, 2026, the same day PlayStation told the public that new console games would lose discs. He was talking about the DADC plant in Thalgau, near Salzburg, which still sends 600,000 discs down the line each day. Half of that work is PlayStation. About 20 percent of the PlayStation share is new orders.

“PlayStation is currently about 50 percent of our volume and of that about 20 percent are new orders. We are talking about approximately 10 percent of the volume in 2028,” Tanzer said.

That last sentence travelled as a collapse to one-tenth of current output. Two months later, a Sony DADC spokesperson walked the number back.

To clarify and avoid any misleading information: in that statement Dietmar anticipated an overall product volume decline by 10 percent, not a decline down to 10 percent.

Sony DADC spokesperson, September 4, 2026

The figure covers 2028 only. Tanzer did not put a number on the years after, and the spokesperson would not add one. Reorders of older PlayStation titles will still go to shops after January 2028, the spokesperson said, then pointed those details to PlayStation’s own press team. PlayStation did not answer questions on reorder volumes.

Some write-ups of that walk-back already treat leftover capacity as a promise to keep making new boxed games. DADC did not say that. It said overall product volume dips by 10 percent in 2028. New SKUs are a different sentence.

New PlayStation Games Were Already About 10% of Thalgau

The 10 percent drop is easier to read once the plant mix is on the table. Fifty percent of Thalgau’s volume is PlayStation, and 20 percent of that PlayStation work is new orders, so new PlayStation games are about a tenth of everything the plant presses. The Austrian Federal Economic Chamber published the same split the next day, in Tanzer’s own briefing: new PlayStation games about 10% of total disc production at the site.

HOW THALGAU’S DISC VOLUME BREAKS DOWN

Kill the new-game slice and overall volume falls by about 10 percent. That is the arithmetic behind the quieter number. It is also why a 10 percent drop can sound like good news while the new-release shelf still goes empty. The presses that remain are not saving 2028 launches. They are reprinting older PlayStation SKUs and keeping the CD, DVD, Blu-ray, and UHD lines alive.

Thalgau is DADC’s disc headquarters, with 300 people on site. Staff were told about the change on July 1, 2026, the day the public heard the PlayStation policy. Tanzer said he wants to hold that headcount. He also said forecasts past early 2028 would be irresponsible, because the next product has to sell first.

January 2028 Still Ends Discs for New Releases

Sid Shuman, senior director of content communications at Sony Interactive Entertainment, posted the policy in a short PlayStation Blog note. From January 2028, Sony will end disc production for new games on PlayStation consoles. After that date, new titles sell on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only, including download codes in a box.

Games already out on disc, and games still slated to ship on disc before January 2028, keep their physical SKUs. That is the same line DADC used when it talked about reorders. The cutoff matches PlayStation’s July plan to stop new discs, and the September correction did not rewrite it.

THE DATES BEHIND THE 10 PERCENT FIGHT

1. July 1, 2026: PlayStation says physical disc production for all new console games stops in January 2028, with no change for titles already on disc or still launching on disc before that month.
2. July 1, 2026: Tanzer tells an Austrian broadcaster that PlayStation is about 50 percent of Thalgau’s volume, that about 20 percent of that share is new orders, and that the plant is talking about 10 percent of volume in 2028. The 300 staff hear the restructuring the same day.
3. July 2, 2026: Tanzer tells the economic chamber that disc making stops only for new releases, that reorders through the end of 2027 still run, and that new PlayStation games are about 10 percent of total disc production.
4. September 4, 2026: A DADC spokesperson says Tanzer meant an overall product volume drop by 10 percent in 2028, not a drop down to 10 percent, and that reorders still go to market after the cutoff.

Live chats during early September State of Play streams filled with “NO DISC NO BUY” from the open through the close. That anger still points at the January 2028 rule, not at a mistranslated factory percentage. The quieter number does not put a disc in a 2028 launch box.

Why Sony Can End Discs and Microsoft Cannot

Sony never opened PlayStation disc pressing to outside plants. DADC does the work in-house. Microsoft does the opposite. Publishers pick a certified plant through the Xbox Authorized Replicator process, submit a bill of materials, and press Xbox discs under Microsoft’s rules. Microsoft can still halt a run. It does not have to own the line.

Shawn Layden, the former chairman of SIE Worldwide Studios, now a game industry strategic advisor, called a PlayStation future without physical discs “depressing, but solvable,” then added that he thinks so. The hurdle, he said, is the proprietary press. Unless Sony licenses that process to specialist plants, there is no way for a third party to make a PlayStation game disc. He was careful to say he does not have line of sight on any deal.

No one who spoke on the record said they were in talks with Sony about a license. PlayStation has not said whether it would offer one. Boutique publisher iam8bit, which builds collector editions, still wants in. Jon Gibson, co-owner and co-creative director, said the company would “absolutely love to find a way forward to continue making physical PlayStation games,” and that it is “big believers in giving humans the option to truly own media.”

If a license ever appeared, it would more likely go to a large replicator than a collector shop. Conectiv Supply Chain Solutions, a Memphis optical-disc and vinyl plant formed in 2025 after Variant Equity Advisors bought Vantiva’s supply-chain unit, has been buying rather than shrinking, including a deal for SDS, the Universal and Warner Bros. home-entertainment distributor. Conectiv and its chief did not reply to questions about PlayStation work.

$21 on the Store, About Half at Retail

There is a plain money reason Sony may not want outside presses. Daniel Ahmad, an analyst at Niko Partners, argued on the day of the July announcement that the cutoff is a platform decision built to cut costs, eliminate the resale market, and pull every new-game dollar through PlayStation Store. On a $70 third-party game sold there, he said, Sony keeps $21. Sold at retail, it earns about half that.

Used copies do not pay that store fee. A download code in a box does not create a second-hand disc. The same closed storefront is already in the legal fight over Sony’s PlayStation Store, which is the other half of the margin story. Ending new discs does not only shrink a factory schedule. It also ends a parallel market Sony does not take a cut from.

Sony’s own mix already leans that way. About 80 percent of its full-game software sales were digital in fiscal 2025. Circana’s Mat Piscatella, the firm’s video game industry advisor, has been publishing the physical remainder in public notes through the summer.

PHYSICAL PLAYSTATION SALES IN THE UNITED STATES

• Hardware mix: By the end of May 2026, 27 percent of PS5 consoles sold in the United States were digital-only models, against 52 percent of Xbox Series hardware.
• Hit discs: Only seven PlayStation games sold more than 100,000 physical copies in the United States in the first half of 2026, and none of those seven reached 275,000.
• Category fade: U.S. physical game unit sales fell to 37 million in the 12 months ending June 2026, from 292 million in the 12 months ending June 2009, about 87 percent down.
• July floor: Physical software spending in the United States was $85 million in July 2026, the lowest month Circana has recorded since it began tracking in 1995, with PlayStation at 32 percent of that physical spend and Nintendo platforms at 63 percent.

Those figures explain why a plant can lose its new-game slice and call the result a 10 percent volume dip. They do not measure what Layden wants on the other ledger, which is brand cost, not unit cost.

Reprints and Movie Discs Keep the Presses Running

Leftover capacity is already being read as Sony blinking. Independent shops have treated the 10 percent correction as proof that restocks of older physical titles can continue after 2028, which is what DADC actually said. Fan campaigns have gone further and called the same number a way back for new boxed games. That leap needs a license Sony has not offered, and a policy PlayStation has not rewritten.

The boycott talk also collides with how hits actually sell. People who want a physical boycott still pre-order blockbusters that arrive as a code in a box. The leftover 90 percent of Thalgau’s volume does not fix that gap. It covers reprints of games that already had a disc, plus the music and movie lines that were always half the plant.

WHAT STILL GETS A PLAYSTATION DISC

• Catalog titles: Games that already released on disc keep that format, including later reorders after January 2028.
• Pre-cutoff launches: Games still slated to ship on disc before January 2028 keep their physical SKUs.
• Non-game discs: CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, and UHDs stay in the Thalgau mix, which is why overall volume can fall only 10 percent when new PlayStation games vanish.
• New 2028 games: Titles that launch from January 2028 onward do not get a PlayStation disc, from Sony or from anyone else, unless Sony later licenses the press.

Layden argued that collecting is a core game habit, not a rounding error, from steelbooks and three-disc sets to a second copy left in shrink wrap. He also said too many of these calls get made as pure finance, with no line for what the brand eats.

What does ownership mean anymore? It’s a genuine question. Well, in fact, it’s not even a question anymore. It’s like you are shifting the model from ownership to accessibility.

Shawn Layden, former chairman of SIE Worldwide Studios

You could never sell an iTunes library, he added, and you cannot sell a PlayStation download library either. “So if you can’t resell it, do you really own it?” He has watched companies book a saving and then watch brand value drop 30 percent, and he said he hopes the dollars were worth it. That 30 percent is his warning, not a measured write-down. The store math Ahmad laid out is the measured side, and it still points at January 2028.

Thalgau Is Retraining for Microlenses

The plant’s next product is already on the floor. Sony DADC has put €30 million ($34 million) over recent years into plastic microlenses and the line changes they need, Tanzer told the chamber. In 2027 it will spend another €10 million to keep Thalgau a high-tech site. Serial production of the lenses is due in 2027, a year before new PlayStation games lose their discs.

Markus Streibl, who heads Micro Optics at Sony DADC, described the work as shrinking optical systems so they can focus and steer light in a tight space. One use is a car turn signal projected onto the road. Another is a forklift that throws a warning onto the floor. Workers were already pulled off disc lines on July 1, 2026, for test runs. Tanzer said staff will move from disc making into the new unit, and that headcount stays at 300 at least into early 2028. After that, he said, the market for the new parts has to answer.

We have to reinvent ourselves to a degree, but we are confident that we can do it.

Dietmar Tanzer, chief of Sony DADC, to the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber

So the 10 percent correction is true as factory arithmetic, and it is being asked to do a job it cannot do. Thalgau can keep most of its disc volume in 2028 by reprinting old PlayStation games and pressing movies and albums. It cannot put a disc in a game that does not exist yet. Mass microlens production is slated for 2027, while new PlayStation games still have one more year on disc. The last Sony-owned disc plant is already practicing a different product. The January 2028 shelf is still digital.