Sony has just announced that PlayStation will gradually bid farewell to physical game discs in the future, emphasizing that players are now more inclined to purchase digitally. As a result, the entertainment market on the other side has completely opposite plots. According to the latest data, U.S. CD sales surged by 16% in the first half of 2026, and the main force driving this revival turned out to be Gen Z young players who are considered “the most accustomed to digital life”! This also caused the outside world to start discussing: Does everyone really not want physical collections? Or is this just what the game companies want everyone to believe?
Sony announced that it would abandon discs, but CDs suddenly came back to life?
Sony announced earlier that starting from January 2028, new PlayStation games will stop producing physical disc versions, and future new games will mainly be in digital form. Officials stated that this is in response to changes in players’ purchasing habits, and the digital market has become a major trend. But just when PlayStation thought physical media was on its way out, the music market was moving in the opposite direction. According to Luminate data, U.S. CD sales increased by 16% in the first half of 2026, reaching 16.3 million units, even surpassing the growth rate of vinyl records in the same period.
It’s not that young people don’t want entities, they just have a different way of playing!
What’s even more interesting is that this wave of CD revival is not driven by the nostalgia of old players, but driven by Gen Z and Millennials. Many young consumers buy CDs not because they play them every day, but as collectibles, idol peripherals, and a way to support their favorite creators. Some data even point out that about half of Gen Z and Millennial consumers who buy CDs don’t even have a CD player at home. In other words, what they buy is not a “playback tool”, but a collection that can be held in their hands.
Will game discs also experience a backlash?
Of course, music CDs are not completely comparable to game CDs. After all, games require updates, server support, and a more complex technical environment. But this recovery in the CD market has also made many players rethink one thing: Is it true that no one wants physical media anymore?
For players, in addition to the play function, the physical version also represents the rights to collect, resell and preserve. Now that Sony is promoting full digitalization, the biggest controversy may not be the technical issue, but whether players are willing to accept that “buying games” will gradually turn into “renting the right to use”. After all, ten years ago everyone thought CDs were obsolete, but now they are picked up by young people as a trendy collection. In the entertainment industry, sometimes it doesn’t go in a straight line, but it keeps going in circles and coming back to slap yourself in the face.