Analyst: Sony’s Disc-Free PS5 Shift Won’t Change Nintendo’s Physical Strategy
Sony’s decision to stop manufacturing physical PS5 discs from January 2028 won’t push Nintendo to abandon cartridges any time soon, according to Circana analyst Mat Piscatella. Speaking to Video Games Chronicle in the days after Sony’s announcement, Piscatella said the shake-up is unlikely to alter Nintendo’s approach to physical media for the remainder of the Switch 2’s life cycle.
PlayStation’s decision to stop releasing disc-based games won’t have an impact on Nintendo’s plans for this generation, market research firm Circana told VGC, after Sony announced that physical disc games will be discontinued for PlayStation consoles from January 2028, with new games from all publishers going digital only after that date. Piscatella, Circana’s senior director and video game industry advisor, told the outlet he thought the decision to move entirely away from physical media would happen eventually, and that if Xbox follows suit with its own Project Helix plans, it will likely mean Switch 2 will be the only system in this generation to have physical games.
Why Piscatella Says Switch 2 Outlasts the Field
Piscatella framed the change as the culmination of a trend rather than a sudden pivot. He noted the long-term trend in video game sales and said, “Sales of new physical video games have fallen every year since the late 2000s.” On Sony’s timing specifically, Piscatella said, “It was inevitably going to happen someday,” adding “I didn’t think an announcement would happen today, but hey it’s 2026 and things just happen.”
Crucially, the analyst doesn’t see the shift as a market earthquake so much as a symbolic one. “All of this will result in more of a psychological shift than a true market shift. The market shift has already happened. But it does seem to be marking the end of an era in video games,” he told VGC. He also pointed out that publishers will likely keep selling boxed editions with codes inside even after the cutover, since this will result in lower sales of video game software at retail, although publishers will still certainly sell code in box or special editions in physical boxes at retail for as long as it makes sense to do so.
Sony’s January 2028 Disc Cutoff, Confirmed
Sony’s own announcement, first detailed on the company’s PlayStation blog, set the actual policy: physical disc production for all new PlayStation titles ends in January 2028, after which new releases arrive only as digital downloads or boxed codes at retail. Sid Shuman, Sony’s senior director of content communications, framed it as a response to how players already buy games. Existing disc libraries and any titles that ship before the cutoff remain fully playable and unaffected by the change.
The backlash was immediate and loud enough that Sony’s own commercial logic has come under scrutiny. Boston University economist Amy Ching, cited by Fortune, argued the resale value baked into physical discs matters more to buyers than platform holders assume. Ching said consumers reacted aggressively to Sony eliminating physical discs because the resale market is still robust, noting “there are people who are diehard, who grow up with Sony, with Xbox, and they still very much enjoy the flexibility of having a physical copy and the possibility that they can resell it.” She added that once that trade-in option disappears, “their willingness to pay is going to decrease,” pushing some players toward switching consoles or simply buying fewer games.
Alinea Analytics: Killing Resale Suits Sony’s Bottom Line
Games analyst Rhys Elliott of Alinea Analytics went further in comments to GameSpot, reprinted by Fortune, framing the move as a deliberate play for control of the secondary market rather than a simple cost-saving exercise. “Every resale and rental is value flowing to players and retailers instead of to the platform,” Elliott said, arguing that “without discs, that converts into a fresh full-price digital sale or it doesn’t happen at all, and both outcomes obviously suit Sony better than a thriving second-hand market.”
That reading dovetails with Piscatella’s own assessment that the change was less about consumer demand shifting overnight and more about Sony formalising a direction the market had already taken. Both analysts agree the disc drive’s days as standard PlayStation hardware are numbered, with next-generation PS6 designs expected to skip optical media entirely.
Where That Leaves Switch 2 Owners in NZ and Australia
For Australian and New Zealand shoppers, the practical upshot is that Nintendo remains the console maker still committed to shelf-ready cartridges at retailers like JB Hi-Fi and EB Games, even as Switch 2’s own game-key cards have already blurred the line between “physical” and “digital” locally. Piscatella’s comments suggest that dynamic won’t change because of Sony’s move — Nintendo’s physical strategy was set well before PlayStation’s announcement, and Circana sees no reason for Kyoto to reconsider it mid-generation.
Read also: Xbox Disc-to-Digital “Project Positron” System Could Launch Next Week
Whether Microsoft’s own reported disc-to-digital hardware initiative complicates that picture remains to be seen, but for now Switch 2 looks set to be the last major console standing with a genuine cartridge-in-the-box experience for the rest of this generation.
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