PlayStation — news, articles and guides

While Sony winds down disc production for new PlayStation games, other companies' discs keep making it money. Microsoft doesn't print Xbox game boxes itself — that job goes to third-party contractors like Technicolor, who operate under a license for Blu-ray technology. Royalties from that license get split among the format's patent holders, and Sony is one of the major ones. So for every disc sold for Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One, the Japanese corporation takes a small cut, regardless of who owns the console or the game.

Sony Interactive Entertainment is facing official complaints and lawsuits in five countries, including Mexico, over its plan to fully move away from physical editions of PlayStation games starting in 2028. The dispute centers on whether that shift leaves PlayStation owners too dependent on the PlayStation Store.

Sony appears to be planning(https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/]appears to be planning[/url)] to sell advertising opportunities across the PlayStation ecosystem to major brands, according to new job listings for monetization specialists. Judging by the descriptions, the company is looking beyond gaming companies and exploring broader advertising formats across its services.

Konami has issued Patch 1.07 for Silent Hill 2 on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro, a 6 GB update that targets the remake's biggest technical rough edges. The patch focuses on improving image quality and stability, with changes aimed at both Performance Mode and Quality Mode.

Funcom has announced that the console version of Dune: Awakening has gone gold, with the game still scheduled to launch on September 22, 2026 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series. The studio says development on the console version is finished and it is now ready for release.

Sony is now telling buyers about its disc-to-digital shift before they even open the box: new PS5 retail packaging includes a warning that upcoming PlayStation games will no longer be sold on disc. According to the notice, games released before January 2028 will still work on the console, and the warning is already appearing on new PS5 boxes in several languages as they reach retailers.

Kyty PS5 emulator has reached a new milestone, according to its GitHub repository: the project is still early in development, but it can already boot 2D games and some 3D titles on Windows and Linux. The repository describes KytyPS5 as a free and open-source PS5 emulator written in C++.

Sony said its memory supply is locked in for the PlayStation 5's next fiscal year, which should help it avoid a holiday crunch even if Grand Theft Auto VI pushes demand higher around its November release window.

Sony has released its latest PlayStation 5 quarterly report, revealing that console sales have slowed significantly. As of June 30, 2026, worldwide PS5 shipments had reached 95.3 million units. During the three-month period ending on the same date, Sony Interactive Entertainment shipped 1.6 million consoles.

PlayStation supporters are preparing a week-long #PSBlackout for late August, urging players to boycott Sony Interactive Entertainment after the company's decision to end physical game disc production. Does It Play? announced the campaign in an X post, calling on players to join an economic and gameplay blackout.

Users around the world have been hit by a widespread outage affecting numerous gaming and streaming platforms. Services including Twitch, PlayStation Network (PSN), Battle.net, Valorant, League of Legends, Brawl Stars, and several other online platforms have all experienced issues at the same time.

During Ubisoft's quarterly earnings call, CEO Yves Guillemot addressed Sony's plan to stop producing physical PlayStation discs for new games by January 2028 and said it should not disturb the industry too much. The comments came after TD Cowen analyst Doug Crutz raised concerns that losing the used games market could create a demand headwind.

Alanah Pearce, the former Santa Monica Studio employee, said Sony routinely tells PlayStation staff what they can and cannot say around major announcements, including game reveal days. In a video published on July 23, she said she personally received that kind of guidance when God of War Laufey was announced, and that the company treated the subject as unusually sensitive.

Publisher Arc Games and developer Thekla announced that Order of the Sinking Star will launch on PlayStation 5 in 2026. The narrative puzzle adventure was already announced for Nintendo Switch 2 and PC, and Jonathan Blow — the creator of Braid and The Witness — says Thekla has been working on it for about ten years and calls it the biggest game of his career.

Yoko Taro, the creator of NieR, said he is saddened by the disappearance of physical media after Sony's plan to stop producing PlayStation game discs by 2028. The game director added that the shift to digital distribution looks like the flow of the times, even though he once expected physical limited editions to survive longer.

The August 2026 PlayStation Plus removal list is already appearing in the Japanese PlayStation Store, giving subscribers a heads-up that these games are nearing the end of their run. Sony announced that six titles will leave the PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium game catalogue in August 2026, and monthly departures are typically the same across all regions.

In early July, Sony "delighted" gamers with the news that it would stop releasing games on physical media in 2028. Moreover, disc production will cease altogether, meaning the process cannot even be outsourced to another company. The announcement triggered one of the biggest PR nightmares in the history of the PlayStation brand: thousands of angry posts and comments flooded social media, and the backlash has shown no sign of dying down even after almost three weeks. It is easy to understand Sony's community: yes, many suspected that digital distribution would eventually replace physical media altogether, but few could have imagined it happening so soon. Especially since, at this point, an all-digital future looks profoundly bleak. Let us examine exactly what is so troubling about this situation, what PlayStation should have done instead, and whether there is still any chance of the decision being reversed.

The developers of MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls have released a new trailer highlighting an alternate look for Storm. The video showcases the iconic X-Men hero sporting a striking punk rock-inspired outfit based on her appearance in the Uncanny X-Men comics.

Sony's latest PlayStation controller patent, published on July 16, 2026, sketches a modular design built around swappable parts rather than a fixed DualSense layout. Sony has not confirmed that a real product is in development.

Sony has detailed how the August 20, 2026 PlayStation Store currency change will work in Latin America, including which markets are first, how wallet balances will convert, and when the store will go offline for maintenance. The announced update affects the PlayStation Store, and Sony says it is meant to make digital purchases simpler for players in the region.