PlayStation 5 Review: Disc or Digital, It Is Still the Console for Exclusives

Sony has put a notice at the top of its own PS5 page: from January 2028, newly released games will be sold digitally only, on the PlayStation Store and at retailers. Discs for games released before then keep working. That one sentence changes the disc or digital question more than any spec sheet.

Disc or digital, answered first

Buy the Digital Edition unless you own a shelf of discs. Sony's page describes it as an all-digital console with no drive, and says you can add a disc drive later, sold separately. That makes the Digital Edition the safe pick: if your habits change you can bolt on the drive, but you cannot take one out of the disc version if you never use it.

The disc edition still has real uses. It plays 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray and DVD, and it lets you buy used games, borrow from friends and trade titles in. Sony says its drive can also upgrade eligible PS4 disc games to digital PS5 versions. The slim Digital Edition ships with 825 GB of storage and the disc model with 1 TB, so plan on buying an expansion drive either way.

The price is the problem

The Digital Edition starts at $599.99 in the US, with the disc model priced higher. That is the most expensive standard PS5 has ever been, and Sony's price has moved several times, so check the store before you buy. Handhelds and gaming PCs compete for the same budget, and we review those on this site.

What the money buys is a specific thing: a box that runs Sony's studio games first, with a controller that has haptics and adaptive triggers in the box.

The exclusives are the reason

Sony's games page leads with "unmissable PS5 games from PlayStation Studios", and the pitch is the one it has made since launch. Astro Bot, God of War Ragnarok, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and Ghost of Yotei all started on PlayStation, and several reach PC later with a delay.

playstation.com

That delay is our rule for the verdict. If you can wait a year or two for ports, a gaming PC covers most of the library. If you want the games at launch, you need the console.

The back catalogue helps

Sony says the PS5 is backward compatible with the overwhelming majority of PS4 games, which means thousands of titles, and that some can be upgraded to a PS5 version for free or for a fee. Your old digital library carries over under the same account.