"Can't play digital games till you fix it. Yet I can put my disc in and play. The all digital future looks great." That was the sardonic message left on X by one gamer on Friday, as a global PlayStation Network outage left tens of thousands unable to launch games, apps or network features on their consoles.
The problems, which Down Detector said affected tens of thousands of users worldwide, began around the same time as an alert from Amazon Web Services about server issues – which was also later resolved. By Friday evening, Sony's status page confirmed all affected services were up and running again.
“Tens of thousands of gamers faced outages as a PSN failure highlighted concerns about Sony's planned disc-free future from 2028.”
But the outage reignited concerns about Sony's plans to stop releasing new PlayStation games on discs from January 2028. The company said in a blog post earlier this month that new games would still be sold in shops – but they would come with a digital code, not a physical disc. The move follows the announcement that Grand Theft Auto VI will launch as download only, prompting questions about the future of physical media.
The BBC has approached PlayStation for comment.