A day that many have long expected is finally coming: PlayStation is ending physical discs for new game releases in 2028. Sony Interactive Entertainment announced today that disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will stop in January 2028, with new titles available only in digital formats from that point on.
The announcement came via the official PlayStation Blog, with SIE’s Sid Shuman explaining the decision as a response to “consumer preferences”, with digital purchases now far outpacing discs.
There are a few important details worth pulling out of the announcement. The cutoff applies to new games only; anything released on disc before January 2028 is unaffected, and existing physical libraries will continue to work as they do now. New games will still be sold at retailers as well as on PlayStation Store, just as digital products rather than boxed discs.
What It Means for Gran Turismo
The obvious question for readers here is what this means for the next Gran Turismo title.
Polyphony Digital has not announced a successor to Gran Turismo 7, but the timing is hard to ignore. If the next mainline entry arrives after January 2028 (and given the series’ famously slow development cycles, that seems more likely than not), it would become the first numbered Gran Turismo in the franchise’s 30-year history to launch without a disc.
In practice, the series has been drifting this way for years. GT7 was one of the most-downloaded PlayStation 5 games of 2022, and the game’s always-online requirement means even disc owners depend on Polyphony’s servers for almost everything beyond Music Rally. The GT7 disc might get the game onto your console faster, but it doesn’t preserve the experience the way a GT2 disc did.
That last point is an uncomfortable one for preservationists. Physical media has traditionally been the safety net that keeps old games playable decades later, and it’s why original copies of the PS1 and PS2 titles still matter. For modern, server-dependent games, that net was already fraying, and Sony’s announcement makes it official.
End of an Era for Collectors
Gran Turismo has always had a particular relationship with the physical box.
The series has a long tradition of collector-focused packaging, from steelbooks and anniversary editions to GT7’s region-specific pre-order collectibles. Even the quirks of physical distribution became stories in themselves, like when Amazon shipped GT7 discs a week early in 2022.
The strangest physical artifact in GT history, though, remains Gran Turismo 2’s scratch-and-sniff disc. When the game launched in Europe in January 2000, retail copies featured a disc that, when scratched, gave off an authentic “pit lane” scent of burnt rubber.
For collectors, the practical takeaway is that the clock is now running. Any Gran Turismo releases, special editions, or reprints that make it to disc before January 2028 will be the last of their kind, and it’s a safe bet the aftermarket will treat them accordingly.
What Comes Next
Sony says the transition will have no impact on games already released, and there’s still a year and a half of physical releases to come before the deadline. Whether Polyphony Digital marks the occasion with one final boxed Gran Turismo product remains to be seen, but the clock is ticking.
