The news that Sony plans to retire PlayStation game discs at the beginning of 2028 continues to make lots of people very angry, including the stores whose business currently relies on gaming retaining a physical component. A trade organization called Entertainment Retailer’s Association in the UK recently fired back at the PS5 email with a statement that might not alter the platform’s current trajectory but made some good points nonetheless.
“PlayStation’s announcement that major games will no longer be available on disc is a triumph of corporate convenience over consumer choice,” wrote ERA CEO Kim Bayley, as reported by The Game Business. “Every year, millions of gamers still choose to buy physical copies because they value true ownership. A disc can be shared with family, traded in, collected, preserved and, crucially, still played years from now. A download license often offers none of those freedoms.”
The group represents all of the major game retailers in the UK, including Amazon, GAME, and others. The Game Business also reports, per Nielsen IQ/GfK, that 45 percent of all physical games sold in the UK last year were for PS4 or PS5, representing nearly half of all revenue from physical games. The large majority of these sales are people receiving games through the mail, rather than walking into a store and picking them up on release day. Physical games are dying but not yet actually dead.
“ERA consumer data shows that 25 percent of under 25s use discs for gaming and the total [UK] disc-based games market was valued at over £300 million in 2025, demonstrating that there remains a substantial and committed audience for boxed games,” Bayley wrote. “Retailers see this demand every day. Physical games continue to bring people into shops and give consumers real value through gifting, collecting and resale.”
She continued, “The industry should be embracing every legitimate way consumers want to buy games, not narrowing their choices. Digital distribution has transformed gaming and is hugely popular, but it should complement physical formats, not replace them. Consumers deserve the freedom to choose how they buy their entertainment. Removing discs doesn’t represent progress–it simply removes choice. That’s bad for gamers, bad for retailers and ultimately bad for the long-term health and preservation of our games industry.”
Sony is unlikely to be swayed by that logic, but the uproar from players over the upcoming death of discs hasn’t subsided yet. A petition calling for the company to reverse course just pushed past 300,000 signatures, and even the mainstream media has started covering the issue. “Movies still come on Blu-ray, music is still pressed on vinyl and books still fill store shelves,” NBC News posted over the weekend. “But as Sony moves to phase out physical PlayStation releases, many gamers are asking why video games should be the first major entertainment medium to go all digital.”
