In 2013, Sony put out a ten-second video: one executive hands a disc to another. That was the whole joke, this is how you share a PlayStation game, and it won a standing ovation at Xbox’s expense. This month Sony announced the end of the disc, and with it something bigger than a format: a resale economy that analysts value at more than $7 billion.
The numbers
Sony ends disc production for new PlayStation games at the end of 2027; from January 2028 every new release is digital-only. Boxed retail copies, where they exist, carry a download code. Games already on disc are unaffected.
Source: CNBC
The global second-hand game market, covering pre-owned games, consoles and accessories, was worth an estimated $7.2 billion in 2025, projected to reach $13.8 billion by 2034. Analyst estimate (Dataintelo), and the projection predates Sony’s announcement.
Source: Dataintelo, via CNBC
Physical PS5 games are usually cheaper than the PlayStation Store; over €50 cheaper in extreme cases. Tweakers tracked 16 games across four years of Dutch retail and PS Store data. First-party digital prices “almost never” fall; only Horizon Forbidden West ever got a permanent cut (€80 to €60).
Sony stands to earn up to 54% more per $70 first-party sale when it goes digital instead of disc, around 40% for third-party games. Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier’s calculations, as reported by Eurogamer.
Source: Eurogamer
GTA 6 launches November 19 under the new model: its physical box carries a download code, not a disc, with preload from November 12. CNBC reports this “reportedly”; Rockstar confirmed it directly.
Source: Rockstar Games
Trade-ins were never pocket money. They were the float.
Wedbush’s Michael Pachter gave CNBC the number that matters: historically, at least a third of games sold were used, and the trade-in credit from those sales paid for new ones. Kill the disc and you do not only close the used shelf; you drain the float that funded full-price purchases. GameStop’s CEO calling physical “irrelevant” last week reads differently in that light: the shops saw this coming because they run on that float.
Morningstar’s Kazunori Ito expects the second-hand game market to “keep shrinking and eventually disappear.” Note what that does to the projection above: an analyst firm sized this market at $13.8 billion by 2034 before Sony put an end date on the disc. One of those two futures is wrong.
The price you pay when there is no shop to undercut Sony
The Tweakers data is the sharpest evidence yet that this costs players real money. Across four years and 16 games, the disc was usually the cheaper way to buy, sometimes by more than €50, because retailers cut prices over time and compete with each other. The PlayStation Store does neither: games sit at their €70–80 launch price for years, dipping only during sales and snapping back after. Of every first-party game Tweakers tracked, exactly one ever got a permanent price cut.
Retailers can still sell download codes after 2028, so some price competition survives. But a code cannot be traded in, lent, gifted or resold; Schreier’s maths shows why Sony can live with that: up to 54% more revenue per first-party sale. Pachter put the consumer side plainly: “the consumer pays the tax in terms of less optionality.” His retail forecast is blunter still: “brick and mortar game retail is doomed.”
GTA 6 is the first test
The biggest launch in gaming history arrives November 19 as a box with a code in it, the model every PlayStation release moves to from 2028. As we covered in yesterday’s piece on the disc collapse, only seven PS5 games have topped 100K US physical sales all year, so the commercial logic is not in doubt. What GTA 6 will test is the other side: what happens when tens of millions of copies of the successor to GTA V, the best-selling game of the last decade, enter the market with nothing to trade.
The PlayTheory take: Sony is not wrong that players went digital. The Tweakers data shows what players lose anyway: the used market was the discount system, the lending library and the pension plan for your finished games, all at once. Sony’s 2013 video was right about what a disc is worth. That is exactly why it is ending production.
Related: Only 7 PS5 games topped 100K physical sales this year · our GTA 6 hub