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Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki confirmed that the company is no longer “aggressively marketing” the PlayStation 5, saying it’s not necessary now that the console is in the later stages of its life cycle.
It’s been nearly six years since the PlayStation 5 first released in November 2020. We’ve come a long way from the days of scalpers making purchases nearly impossible; but these consoles are now largely out of stock at several major retailers once again following Rockstar’s extended look at GTA 6 that released on Netflix this past Thursday.
This marks a sharp turn for the console after it experienced its lowest May sales in the PS5’s history after Sony announced price hikes across all versions of the hardware in April 2026. While highly-anticipated games like GTA 6 seem to be doing all the marketing on Sony’s behalf right now, the company has confirmed that it isn’t fussed about advertising the PlayStation 5 these days.
Hiroki Totoki, CEO at Sony, explained this strategy during an interview with the Wall Street Journal in mid-August, where he admitted that the business’s current goal is profiting off of its existing PlayStation Plus userbase as much as possible.
“We are in the latter half of the life cycle for a PlayStation console,” he said. “That means that we do not need to ‘aggressively sell’ the console today. And rather than that, we’re focusing on recurring revenue from the recurrent userbase. And already, PlayStation Plus has more than 125 million monthly active users today, and how to monetize from those users is quite important for us.”
As expected, comments beneath the video are making sure to point out the company’s future plans to end the production of physical game discs starting January 2028, with one writing on YouTube, “Bring back ‘Only on PlayStation,’ keep physical media.”
“They’ll regret terminating physical media,” another said.
“Maybe they can revert and bring back physical discs, for starters,” another wrote.
These comments are the same under any major post discussing PlayStation, or even posts from the brand, itself. Advertisements for film adaptations of popular games on its consoles are facing a similar fate as players inundate the comments section protesting Sony’s plans for an all-digital future — a future that’s looking increasingly bleak, based on the company’s recent statements to disgruntled customers.
In July, Sony’s chief financial officer, Lin Tao, confirmed that it will “cautiously move forward” with killing off physical discs, arguing that this decision was made in response to the increasing “digitization of contents.”
And on August 21, Sony responded to a class action lawsuit from consumers who argued that the PlayStation digital store doesn’t make it obvious that players are merely purchasing a revocable license, instead of fully owning the games permanently.
“In the digital age, it is not plausible to allege that reasonable consumers believed they were obtaining ‘ownership’ of a digital game,” the company said.
Thus far, the future of the PlayStation 6 is unknown, but players are worried that both this console and Xbox’s Project Helix will be digital-only by default.
Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.
