Strauss Zelnick has a theory about why nobody should mourn a GTA 6 disc, and it involves record stores.
The Take-Two boss was asked about the decision to skip a physical release for Rockstar’s next game during a Q&A with analysts following the company’s Q1 2027 financial release. He didn’t take the bait on Sony’s move to end physical disc production for PlayStation games from 2028. He did, however, make his position on GTA 6 impossible to misread.
Discs, he said, “don’t really make sense for the consumer.”
The math he’s working from
“Our business is well over 90% digitally distributed,” Zelnick said. “It’s already a digital business. So in certain instances, especially if it’s a big game, discs just — and note I said discs — don’t really make sense for the consumer.”
That parenthetical is doing work. Zelnick is drawing a line between the disc as a delivery method and physical editions as objects, and he wants you to notice.
His second argument is the one that’ll sting for anyone who’s tried to play a modern release on a disconnected console.
“Also, most instances you have to register online to play anyhow,” he said. “So if you’re already connected, who cares if you download digitally? It’s all the same and it’s much more convenient.”
Enter the vinyl comparison
Then came the analogy that’s going to follow him around for a while.
“So that’s where the world is going in our opinion and I think Sony understands that,” Zelnick said. “We certainly understand that. It doesn’t mean that we won’t have physical additions now and then, I’m sure we will in the same way that there’s still vinyl in the recorded music business. But in other instances, it just won’t make sense.”
Read that carefully. He’s not promising discs. He’s promising the collector’s-shelf version of them, the thing you buy because you want to own an object rather than because it’s how you install the game. Vinyl didn’t survive as a format. It survived as a keepsake.
Sony isn’t budging either
Last week Sony finally broke its silence on discontinuing PlayStation discs, saying the decision isn’t affecting its business now and it doesn’t expect any negative impact in the future. Executives have said Sony will not change its mind, while acknowledging “strong views” from the video game community.
“Strong views” is generous phrasing for what’s actually happening. Players are signing online petitions and swarming PlayStation social posts with concerns about preservation and ownership, to the point where new game releases with nothing to do with any of this are getting buried in the noise.
Physical media advocates have gone further, calling for a week-long PlayStation boycott in August to register that killing discs from 2028 isn’t acceptable.
The retailers have opinions too
It’s not only players. The UK’s Digital Entertainment and Retail Association called Sony’s decision “a triumph of corporate convenience over consumer choice.”
Zelnick’s answer to all of that is essentially a shrug backed by a spreadsheet. When 90% of your business already moves without a disc, the disc stops being a distribution question and becomes a merchandising one.
Which is the quiet part of the vinyl comparison. Records came back, sure. They came back at $40 a pop, pressed in limited runs, sold to people who already streamed the album.
