PS5 Disc Drive purchase cap predates Sony’s disc cutoff — ‘high demand’ order limit has been on the store page since at least March 2025
Sony’s one-per-order purchase limit on the PS5 Disc Drive, widely cited this week as a response to panic buying after the company said it will end physical disc production for new PlayStation games in January 2028, has been on PlayStation Direct since at least March 2025. Archived captures of the product page cited by HotHardware carry the same wording, “Due to high demand, there is a limit of 1 per order,” more than a year before Sony’s announcement. Meanwhile, the largest petition against the disc cutoff sat beyond 74,000 signatures on the morning of July 4th, closing in on its 75,000 goal.
Sony did add something to the product page this week: a bolded notice stating that from January 2028, newly released PlayStation games will be sold on the PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital format only, and that discs for games released before that date will continue to play on supported consoles. We checked the live U.S. listing today and found both the new notice and the long-standing order limit, along with a line warning that household limits may apply.
The detachable drive, $79.99 at retail, is the only way to play physical games or Blu-ray movies on the PS5 Digital Edition and PS5 Pro, neither of which comes with one. eBay listings for the accessory reached $100 to $130 this week, according to HotHardware, which also noted that Best Buy stocks the drive at retail price with no order limit. Sony hasn’t said whether it intends to keep manufacturing the drive after the disc cutoff, or how long the PlayStation Direct restriction will remain in place.
A Change.org petition organized by Jade Pearce, CEO of Canadian game retailer PNP Games, gathered more than 74,000 signatures in three days, and Push Square counted at least 15 separate petitions urging Sony to reverse course. The backlash has already spread beyond petitions, with various companies poking fun at Sony’s decision, including GitHub, which announced that it’ll begin offering CD-ROM copies of public repositories as a jab at the decision.
Regardless, Sony’s disc manufacturing plans appear to be set in stone. PlayStation output accounts for roughly half of the volume at Sony DADC’s plant in Thalgau, Austria, with new game disc orders making up around 20% of that share, CEO Dietmar Tanzer told Austrian broadcaster ORF in comments reported by Wccftech. The site’s roughly 300 workers are being retrained to produce optical microlenses, with mass production of the new line set to begin in early 2027, a year before the disc cutoff takes effect.
