Sony left the comments live on yesterday's Phantom Blade Zero State of Play, and the chat was pretty much exactly what you would expect.
Back in July, Sony announced it will stop making discs for new games in 2028, which naturally caused uproar within the community of fans who still want to buy physical games. This has been very much targeted, with the likes of a Marvel's Wolverine trailer being bombarded with comments demanding Sony change its mind – as is the case with most trailers on the PlayStation YouTube channel and most posts on the PlayStation social accounts, even games not published by Sony.
However, Sony seems somewhat unphased, saying that "we don't see that there will be any negative impact on our business," further evidenced by the fact it didn't bother to turn off comments for the Phantom Blade Zero State of Play.
During the 20 minute deep dive, the live chat was bombarded with chants of "no disc no buy" and a mass amount of disc emojis. And, via a clip from Twitter user thegamersjoint, it looks like the live chat was not stopping at all, hopefully sending the message to Sony.
playstation have the chat enabled for the phantom blade zero live showcase and oh my fucking god bro, they actually don't care 💀💀💀 pic.twitter.com/NeISEoLHZEAugust 18, 2026
This has also continued into the comments on the on-demand version of the video, with tongue-in-cheek comments the likes of "Phantom Disc Zero" and "I'll buy it when it comes out in physical format" flooding the section.
Unfortunately, Sony's decision is having a knock-on effect on games outside of its publishing library. Phantom Blade Zero has been looking pretty sick for years, but its biggest presentation to date has now been overshadowed by Sony's decision to cull physical discs (which has likely made the apparent lack of discs for Phantom Blade Zero a bit more controversial). However, reportedly in 2026, only seven games on PlayStation have sold more than 100,000 physical copies in the US so far, so it feels like people will need to vote with their wallets for Sony to pay attention.
PlayStation killing discs is bad for everyone, whether you care about physical games or not.
