PlayStation creator gets why fans cling to discs, even as discs stop adding up
Ken Kutaragi understands why PlayStation fans do not want to give up discs, even though he thinks discs no longer make economic sense for PlayStation.
The engineer known as the Father of PlayStation gave his view in an interview with Video Games Chronicle at the Game Republic New Horizons event in Middlesbrough, UK. The interview was published on 16 October 2026.
Kutaragi is the former chairman and group chief executive of Sony Interactive Entertainment. That is the PlayStation business, the part of Sony that makes consoles and the store that sells games for them. He oversaw the creation of the PlayStation, PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 before leaving Sony in 2007. Those consoles are home systems that play games through a television, and each arrived on a disc. He is now chief executive of Ascent Robotics and Cyber AI Entertainment.
Kutaragi told VGC he does not think it is economically reasonable for PlayStation to continue dedicating resources to discs. That covers the whole chain behind a boxed game, from pressing and packaging to shipping and supporting disc drives inside consoles. Factories, freight, shelf space and hardware parts all cost money, and each has to be maintained year after year. His point was about cost, not quality.
He said he understands why fans feel differently. Physical discs, he said, have become a metaphor for owning games. The plastic circle now stands in for a larger idea, that you hold what you paid for.
That idea is easy to grasp, even if you never buy games. A disc sits on a shelf. You can see it, lend it, pass it on or find it again years later. A download works differently. It lives inside an account on a storefront, the online shop that sells the game and controls access to it. Ownership, in that sense, feels visible and permanent, while a download can feel distant and conditional.
The remarks came during a rare appearance in Britain. Kutaragi had been confirmed as a speaker at the Game Republic New Horizons Conference in October 2026, according to Game Republic. VGC interviewed him at the event in Middlesbrough.
For fans, this means the argument is not really about plastic. It is about keeping something you can hold as more play moves online. Kutaragi built his career on discs. He says he gets why letting go feels hard. That tension explains why a small silver disc still sparks a large conversation.
