Xbox May Let Discs Survive Its Next Reset, Sony's Making Sure Its Own Don't
Xbox might keep physical media alive through its next hardware jump while Sony just told investors its exit from discs isn't slowing down one bit.
Two data points landed this week that point in opposite directions on the same question, and neither one is close enough to be a coincidence.
The Rumor: Discs Might Outlive Xbox's Next Reset
John Linneman said on the latest Digital Foundry Q&A that his sources told him Microsoft plans to keep supporting physical media through whatever hardware "reset" comes next. The reasoning isn't retail sales, according to what he heard. It's about making sure games people already own still run on whatever Xbox ships after this generation. He mentioned Microsoft weighing an external drive as one possible way to pull that off, and he speculated there's a future where Xbox keeps backing physical releases going forward rather than walking away from them entirely.
Worth being clear that this is a rumor built on secondhand sourcing, not a confirmed roadmap.
It's also a strange thing to get excited about given how Xbox actually treats discs right now. Hellblade 2 shipped with no physical release at all. Doom: The Dark Ages didn't put the full game on its disc either. A fair chunk of what Xbox sells at retail these days is a code in a box, not the game itself. None of that makes the backward compatibility framing implausible, if anything it makes more sense than a retail push would, since Microsoft's actual track record on letting old libraries keep working on new hardware is one of the few things it's been consistently good at. It's about the only place I'll hand Xbox credit without an asterisk attached.
It also lines up with where Xbox's energy is actually going lately. The same company reportedly weighing an external drive for physical media is also testing an ad-supported way to stream games you already own for free instead of paying for a subscription. That's a software bet, not a hardware one. If the disc rumor holds up, it'd sit next to that test as another way of saying the same thing: keep people's existing purchases usable by whatever means costs the least to build.
Sony's Not Leaving Room for Rumor
Sony isn't hedging on any of this. During its Q1 fiscal year 2026 earnings presentation, chief financial officer Lin Tao addressed the criticism directly and didn't budge. Digitization across every form of media is moving fast, she said, and PlayStation is no exception. Her framing was blunt: "digitization is progress." She said Sony's heard the strong opinions about phasing out physical games and understands them. That doesn't change the plan. Sony's continuing to wind things down, in her words, carefully.
The numbers back up why there's no incentive to reverse course. Over the past year, 82 percent of all full games sold across PS4 and PS5 were bought digitally, a figure that held steady around 80 percent every quarter. That's full games only, expansions aren't counted and would skew the split even further toward digital. Physical copies have also historically run cheaper than their digital equivalents, which makes this a rougher deal for anyone shopping on price than the earnings call language lets on. I don't love that the cheaper option is the one getting phased out.
Sony also addressed hardware supply directly, saying it doesn't expect production problems for the coming year despite rising memory prices, having already secured enough supply to hit its sales targets for the fiscal year. That includes accounting for GTA 6's arrival in November, which Sony expects to drive real demand for its consoles.
Business As Usual, Discs or Not
None of the earnings call language is slowing anything else down. August's PlayStation Plus Monthly Games lineup is locked in as scheduled, headlined by Dying Light 2 Stay Human: Reloaded Edition alongside Big Walk and Signalis, live August 4.
So one platform holder is reportedly looking for a way to keep discs relevant past its next console, built on sourcing that hasn't been confirmed. The other stood in front of investors and said the opposite outright, backed by a stat it's been sitting comfortably above 80 percent on for a year. If the Xbox rumor pans out, the next generation could end up with exactly one company still bothering to make the case for a disc tray.
