Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) said it will stop producing 4K UHD Blu-ray (UHD-BD) discs for the PlayStation 5 (PS5). The decision reflects a market in which demand for digital downloads has overwhelmingly outpaced physical discs.

SIE said it made the decision after considering user usage patterns and changes in the market environment, as demand for digital media far exceeds physical discs. In this connection, Japan's ITmedia reported on Thursday that the most direct reason for the production halt was the overwhelming dominance of download sales.

According to Sony Group's fourth-quarter earnings materials for fiscal 2025, downloads accounted for 78 percent of game sales on an annual basis. In the most recent quarter, January to March 2026, the share rose to a record 85 percent. By contrast, disc purchases accounted for only 15 percent.

The video content market is following the same trend. According to the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA), shipments of Blu-ray recorders in Japan last year fell about 20 percent from a year earlier to 623,000 units. Compared with 2011, when shipments hit 6,789,000 units amid a boost from the digital transition of terrestrial broadcasting, the market has shrunk to less than one-tenth of its previous size.

In line with the trend, Sony already ended production of Blu-ray disc media in February last year and in February this year also announced an end to shipments of Blu-ray recorders. It is also in the process of transferring its TV and home theater system business to a joint venture with China's TCL. TCL will hold 51 percent of the new entity.

The PS5, released in 2020, includes a 4K UHD-BD drive, but a "Digital Edition" without an optical drive was included in the lineup from launch. That led to an assessment that Sony was lukewarm about expanding physical media. The cheapest Digital Edition model, a Japan-language-only version, is priced at 55,000 yen.

An analysis says distribution of games based on optical media has effectively come to an end after 30 years of the PlayStation brand, or 38 years if counted from the PC Engine. The industry is also raising the view that the likelihood has increased that the next-generation "PlayStation 6" will be released as a fully digital game console without an optical drive.