First Major Publisher Backs Sony's War on Discs

"What we saw on the PC is that it helped to grow the market. There's also some pressure for the future on the cost of machines, and being able to be only digital will help to have a more accessible machine, I would say. There are pluses and minuses. But we think it will not disturb, too much, the industry."

That's Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, speaking during the company's latest financial earnings call, responding to an analyst who asked whether Sony's plan to end physical disc production for new PlayStation games starting January 2028 worried him. It's been three weeks since Sony dropped that bombshell via a PlayStation Blog post, and Guillemot is the first CEO of a major third-party publisher to publicly take a side. He picked Sony's.

I'm not surprised, but I am a little disappointed. Guillemot's framing of the PC market as proof that going digital grows the pie conveniently leaves out everything that makes PC different from console. Steam isn't the only storefront on PC. GOG exists, Humble exists, and if Valve ever disappeared tomorrow, your PC would still be a general-purpose machine capable of running backed-up games. PlayStation has one store, controlled by one company, running on hardware that Sony will eventually stop supporting. We've already watched the PS3 and PS Vita stores get scheduled for closure. Comparing that ecosystem to PC is like comparing a landlord's apartment to a house you own.

Who benefits here?

Guillemot's argument about cheaper hardware has some logic to it. Console prices are climbing, and removing the disc drive does cut manufacturing costs. But the question nobody at these earnings calls seems interested in asking is whether those savings actually reach customers. Nintendo is selling some digital Switch 2 games $10 cheaper than their physical counterparts, but Sony has given zero indication it plans to pass savings along. GTA 6 is launching digital-only and still costs $80. Removing the disc drive from a PlayStation 6 might shave $30 or $40 off the build cost, but if the console still launches at $599 or higher, players aren't seeing that benefit.

The real winners are Sony and publishers like Ubisoft. Digital sales cut out the retailer's roughly 30% share and eliminate manufacturing costs. For a first-party PlayStation title, Sony reportedly keeps around 65% of revenue from a physical copy versus 100% from a digital one. Ubisoft, which already runs its own Ubisoft Connect launcher on PC specifically to avoid paying platform fees to Valve, understands this math better than most. Guillemot wasn't offering an industry analysis; he was endorsing a model that puts more money in his company's pocket.

The consumer downsides are real and unaddressed. No ownership, no resale market, worse game preservation. Thousands of PlayStation fans have been flooding Sony's social channels with angry comments since the announcement. As reported by IGN, analyst Dr. Serkan Toto of Kantan Games suggested Sony anticipated the backlash and is simply waiting for it to pass, noting that even 500,000 cancelled PlayStation Plus subscriptions would represent just 1% of that business.

Ubisoft itself is in a complicated spot to be making proclamations about the industry's future. The publisher is mid-restructuring with layoffs, budget cuts, and delayed projects. Its quarterly earnings were down nearly 10% year-over-year, though Assassin's Creed Black Flag: Resynced has already sold over 3.5 million copies, beating its full-year projections. A company fighting for financial survival has every incentive to cheer on a shift that increases its per-unit revenue.

Other industry figures have been far less diplomatic. Hideo Kojima has said he's "sad" about Sony's decision. Disgaea creator Sohei Niikawa suggested Sony might as well stop making consoles entirely if it's abandoning discs. Guillemot siding with Sony doesn't settle the debate, but it does clarify where the money sits. Publishers want this. Players, by and large, don't. Sony has made clear which group it's listening to, and now we know Ubisoft is fine with that.