Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden has criticized Sony's decision to stop producing physical game discs, saying the company has taken a "significant brand hit" and that the move hurts the "most faithful" gamers.

Sony announced in July that it will end physical disc production for new games releasing on its consoles in January 2028, maintaining that digital downloads do not equate to ownership. The decision has drawn sustained backlash since it was made public: a physical gaming advocacy group has called for an organized boycott, and a "Don't Kill the Disc" petition has collected more than 385,000 signatures. Sony, however, appears unmoved and has given no sign it will change course. With that cutoff now fixed, the open question is whether the petition and boycott effort can build enough support to change Sony's calculus before production winds down.

Layden, who served as President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America from 2014 to 2018—a period squarely within the PlayStation 4 era—questioned the plan in an appearance on The Expansion Pass podcast, calling it a "heavily spreadsheeted decision" that he said was likely driven by projections showing Sony could contain costs and maximize profits.

"It changes the conversation from: do you own a game to do you have access to a digital asset?" he said. "If you can't sell a thing, that means you don't own a thing. If you don't own it, what are you buying? If you're buying access, that doesn't sound quite as sexy." He added, "And, as people tend to do, they'll game out the worst-case scenario."

Layden acknowledged that the convenience of digital downloads means potentially only 20% of gamers still buy physical discs. But that portion of the community, he argued, is often the "most faithful."

"[They are] the people who buy two copies of every game. One never gets out of the shrink wrap, and you play the other one. It's just like comic book collectors," Layden said. "We are an acquisitive collecting sort of people, and we like to show off our stuff. Look at my stuff! So, for those reasons, I don't agree with that decision."

His comments come just months after Sony argued in a California court that no reasonable consumer believes they own the digital games they buy in the PlayStation Store, per court filings reviewed by Game File.

The argument was filed in response to a proposed class action lawsuit alleging that the store's purchase buttons imply ownership rather than a revocable license. Sony claims that its PlayStation Terms of Service and Software Product License Agreement state that the user doesn't own the product, and that users should understand this as a fact. That distinction frames the stakes in Layden's critique: a disc can be resold or kept on a shelf, while a license, as the lawsuit argues, can be revoked.

The episode has once again given the crypto crowd an opening to pitch NFTs as a solution to gamers' ownership concerns. NFTs give holders a verifiable record of ownership, which advocates claim would prevent companies like Sony from revoking access to games. However, NFTs still rely on public metadata and centrally hosted files, so users remain dependent on third parties to access what they technically own. Solving this would require encrypting metadata and hosting content on fully decentralized infrastructure—a standard many NFTs do not meet.