Although Sony referred to “PlayStation consoles” in its announcement, many interpreted this as a hint about PlayStation 6, but it may mean something else.
Wednesday’s major news put Sony in the spotlight after the company announced that it would stop producing PlayStation discs in January 2028. Later that day, a Windows Central rumor suggested that Microsoft was also preparing to take a similar path with its next-generation Xbox, codenamed Project Helix.
Sony faced significant online backlash, especially after players concluded that this meant PlayStation 6 would be available only in digital form. However, that is far from the only aspect of the announcement that analysts have highlighted.
Piers Harding-Rolls, a games-industry analyst at Ampere Analysis, believes that PlayStation 6 will launch in late 2028.
“This announcement reveals a lot about Sony’s plans for its next-generation console, PlayStation 6. First, we believe this almost certainly guarantees that PlayStation 6 will not arrive until 2028 at the earliest. Ampere’s current expectation is that the console will launch at the end of 2028.
Second, the standard version of PlayStation 6 will not include a physical media disc drive, at a minimum. Sony will look for every possible way to reduce the cost of its next-generation console, and eliminating the disc drive is an easy win. An add-on disc drive may be made available to play older PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 games on disc.
Removing the drive will upset players who do not want to pay for an add-on disc drive, if one is available, and who want to access their game collections on disc. It may be too impractical or too complex, but some process of transferring older physical media to a digital license could alleviate some of these issues.” Harding-Rolls wrote.
Harding-Rolls also explained the digital transition. In 2013, when PlayStation 4 launched, only 13% of game sales were digital. By 2025, according to Ampere’s data, 80% of sales were already digital, showing a huge decline in retail sales. This is largely why Rockstar is not concerned with producing physical copies of Grand Theft Auto VI.
Harding-Rolls’s comments contradict hardware rumors suggesting that there is little point in delaying PlayStation 6 and the next Xbox because there is little hope that component prices will improve in the near future. However, the view does align with a Bloomberg rumor published earlier this year, citing sources who said that PlayStation 6 could be pushed to 2028 or even 2029.
Source: WCCFTech, Ampere Analysis
