90% of Gamers Oppose It, But Sony's Stock Climbed 3.2%

3.2% up. Sony's stock closed at ¥3,354 (roughly $21 USD) on July 1, the same day the company confirmed on the PlayStation Blog that no new PlayStation games will ship on disc from January 2028 onward. During that same session, the Nikkei 225 dropped around 1%, meaning investors didn't just shrug at the news; they actively rewarded it. An IGN poll found 90% of readers oppose an all-digital gaming future, and 62% of Push Square readers said they'd buy fewer games as a result. The stock went up anyway.

This is the tension at the heart of modern gaming laid completely bare. Eliminating physical media gives Sony total control over its storefront. No second-hand sales eating into revenue. No retail partners taking a cut on disc copies. No consumers shopping around for cheaper prices at a different store. Every single transaction runs through PlayStation's own digital pipeline. From an investor's perspective, that's a cleaner, higher-margin business. From a player's perspective, it's a company removing your options and calling it progress.

300 Jobs, 30 Million Euros

The machinery is already moving. Sony DADC's CEO, Dietmar Tanzer, told ORF Salzburg that the company's disc manufacturing facility in Thalgau, Austria, is being repurposed into a micro-lens production site. A 30 million euro investment in optical microlens production was secured before the July 1 announcement even went public. The facility's 300 employees learned about the digital shift at the same time as everyone else, and while Tanzer said Sony wants to keep headcount "as close to 300 as possible," according to reporting by Respawn, no firm guarantees were made. Sony DADC's Head of Micro Optics, Markus Streibl, indicated the company plans to mass-produce optical microlenses across its factories as early as 2027.

Sony described the move as adapting "to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs," citing that 78% of game sales in 2025 were downloads. But that figure includes games that never had a physical release in the first place, which makes it a less convincing data point than Sony wants it to be.

The backlash has been loud and specific. Hideo Kojima reposted his own August 2021 tweets warning about the fragility of digital ownership:

"Eventually, even digital data will no longer be owned by individuals on their own initiative. Whenever there is a major change or accident in the world, in a country, in a government, in an idea, in a trend, access to it may suddenly be cut off. We will not be able to freely access the movies, books, and music that we have loved. I would be a have-not. That's what I'm afraid of. This is not greed."

Kojima didn't address Sony's announcement directly, but the repost speaks for itself. And his fears aren't hypothetical anymore: Sony is already set to delete over 550 purchased movies from PlayStation users' libraries with no refund. Announcing that alongside a digital-only future was either tone-deaf or deliberately provocative. I can't tell which is worse.

Shueisha Games' Masami Yamamoto offered a rare silver lining from the development side, noting that dropping disc production frees up about six weeks of polish time since teams no longer need to finalize a disc-ready master build two months before launch. I'll take any win for development timelines, but that benefit doesn't require killing physical media entirely.

Sony's stock will settle. But I keep coming back to that split screen: 90% opposition from the people who actually buy and play the games, and a 3.2% reward from the people who don't. If that doesn't tell you whose interests are driving this industry right now, nothing will. Sony DADC expects microlens mass production to begin in 2027, with disc manufacturing winding down ahead of the January 2028 cutoff.