Sony has told PlayStation development and publishing partners that existing disc games will still be eligible for reorders after its January 2028 cutoff for new physical releases, according to new reporting from Game File on the company's private partner messaging.
Sony announced this week that it will stop producing discs for new games released on PlayStation consoles from January 2028. The public post said already released disc games and games that launch on disc before the deadline would not be affected. The partner version of that message, viewed by Game File, appears to spell out one important operational detail more directly: publishers "will still be able to place re-orders for existing PlayStation disc games."
That means a PS5 game released on disc in 2027 could still have more copies produced after the cutoff, even though brand-new PlayStation releases after January 2028 are set to be sold through PlayStation Store and retailers as digital products. Sony also reportedly told partners that the disc-ordering process will change in ways that have not yet been detailed.
The same partner message says publishers will be given the chance to release new games at retail using digital codes, with more information still to come. That leaves a practical question for publishers and collectors: whether PlayStation's post-2027 retail presence will look like boxed code cards, code slips inside collector packages or some other digital-only retail format.
The clarification arrives while the public backlash around PlayStation's disc exit keeps widening. Game File notes that Sony's U.S. PlayStation Blog post has drawn thousands of comments, while the Japanese PlayStation Blog has also seen an unusually large response. Analyst Serkan Toto told the outlet that Japanese players have a stronger attachment to physical media, pointing to Japan's continued CD market and a 2025 Cross Marketing survey that found digital game purchasing had only recently overtaken physical purchasing among Japanese respondents.
Developers and physical-edition companies are also still pushing back. We have already covered how Sony's plan hit developers who wanted boxed PlayStation games, including Animal Well creator Billy Basso. In a follow-up with Game File, Basso said console physical releases are important to him because they help games remain playable decades later if a digital store closes, while PC is less vulnerable because it is a more open platform.
The new partner detail does not reverse Sony's direction, but it does draw a clearer line around what survives the 2028 change. Older disc releases can continue to be manufactured through reorders, new PlayStation releases lose discs and publishers are still waiting to see what Sony's retail digital-code system actually looks like.