PS6 likely hits 2028 earliest, Ampere analyst says base model drops the disc drive

Sony has already made the quiet choice that changes the whole market: it is discontinuing physical games in 2028. The real question now is not whether discs fade, but how the PS6 will be engineered for a future where physical media matters less, and for whom. Ampere Analysis senior games research analyst Piers Harding-Rolls told Game File that “this pretty much guarantees that PS6 won’t arrive until 2028 at the earliest,” and he also expects “the base version of a PS6 will not include a physical media drive.”

Harding-Rolls ties that timeline and hardware decision directly to what Sony has said about manufacturing and pricing. He primarily points toward Sony’s desire to manufacture consoles as cheaply as possible, and that motivation lines up with a broader PlayStation position: leadership has affirmed it does not plan to sell hardware at a loss. That matters because the entire hardware pipeline has only become more expensive in recent years, and there is no sign those costs are coming down any time soon. If you are trying to hit a price point without bleeding money, removing a disc drive from the standard model is one of the cleanest ways to lower bill-of-materials complexity and cost.

It also helps to look at the timing of prior PlayStation generations, because the PS6 clock is not arbitrary. The PlayStation 5 arrived just under six years ago, and it will be seven years old when 2028 starts. Seven years separated both the PS5 and PS4 from their predecessors. That historical pattern is not a law, but it does frame Harding-Rolls’ “2028 at the earliest” view as a continuation of how PlayStation has paced hardware cycles. The twist is that the world inside those cycles is different today.

The landscape has shifted in ways that make a mid-cycle “must upgrade now” narrative harder to sell. Harding-Rolls argues, in his reasoning, that both sourcing hardware components has become harder and the general need and appetite for upgraded systems is lower. One concrete signal is that GTA 6 is set to launch on the current console generation, which suggests there may not be a strong market push to pull forward a PS5 successor just to showcase “how much faster” a new system is. In other words, if major releases are already comfortably landing on current hardware, the urgency for a new box, at least on the customer side, tends to soften.

The disc question gets even more interesting when you zoom into backward compatibility. PS5 has disc backwards compatibility, but Harding-Rolls’ expectations hinge on Sony’s decision already pointing away from discs as a lasting pillar. He implies Sony would not discontinue physical games without planning a phase-out of support for the format altogether. He also suggests Sony would not want to rush a console right before the end of physical games hits, which is a very practical calendar problem. If physical games are winding down in 2028, launching a disc-forward standard console right at the edge of that transition would be an expensive mismatch.

Meanwhile, the software distribution direction is already moving in the same direction, and the article points to examples that reinforce the momentum. It notes that major games are pushing toward digital-only distribution, including the point that GTA 6 won’t have physical copies at launch, and Rockstar has not confirmed it is getting any. Just one generation ago, PlayStation messaging leaned hard on physical media, captured in the older tagline: “Keep it forever.” Now the industry incentives look different. When distribution and consumer behavior both start to normalize digital, hardware features that serve discs become harder to justify in a standard, profit-sensitive model.

For boards, founders, and operators watching platform risk, this is not just a console spec story. It is a distribution and pricing story that can reshape partner economics. If the base PS6 lacks a disc drive, publishers and developers have to plan around a world where physical availability is no longer a guaranteed lever for reach, merchandising, or regional supply. Retail partners and secondary markets also get squeezed, which can change negotiation dynamics across the value chain. And because Sony does not plan to sell hardware at a loss, the “cheap to build” constraint becomes even more determinative, turning what could have been a consumer electronics debate into a strategic budgeting and product positioning decision.

The takeaway is blunt: Sony is aligning hardware engineering, cost discipline, and the product lifecycle around a 2028 end state for physical games. Harding-Rolls’ expectation that the PS6 base model will not include a physical media drive, paired with “2028 at the earliest” timing, suggests the platform’s next phase is being designed for a market that is already moving on. If you are running a business dependent on physical distribution, hardware attach, or platform availability, you should treat this as an operational deadline, not a rumor about a future console.