Official

Disc-based PS5 consoles are shipping with a multilingual notice about the January 2028 cutoff printed on the packaging. It is the clearest signal yet that Sony is not reconsidering.

CFO Lin Tao told analysts the company had weighed the decision and was not seeing any impact on its business. Petitions, a boycott and eight weeks of backlash have not moved the 2028 date.

PlayStation owners received an email restating that digital purchases are licences, not property — days into a protest about exactly that. The language is standard. The timing is not.

The announcement is short, specific, and narrower than the headlines suggest. Here is the exact wording, what it covers, and the four questions Sony did not answer.