Report showed that 34% of disc games for PS5 and 50% for Xbox Series X do not work fully without downloading

Sony is preparing to end disc production in 2028, so physical media is gradually fading into history. A recent report shows that even buying a disc doesn't guarantee you can launch a game without downloading something first.

The data comes from Does it Play, a site dedicated to testing physical game releases. It checks whether games can be played offline or without downloading extra files. The site homepage features a statistics section that lets you compare consoles based on how friendly they are toward offline play.

As expected, current Sony and Microsoft consoles don't come out looking great. Does it Play has 792 PS5 games in its database, and only 66% of them require no download whatsoever to play as intended. Another 17% fall into the category of playable but too buggy or missing key content, while the remaining 17% need a download just to boot up at all.

Microsoft looks even worse. Series X only passes for 50% of tested games. 12% land in the buggy or content-missing but technically playable category, and 68% require some kind of download to play.

The sample size here is much smaller though, just 78 games. Given the gap between sample sizes, that number should be taken with a grain of salt, but it still reflects the broader shift away from discs that are fully playable without downloads.

Nintendo Switch 2 beats both Xbox and PlayStation. 75% of its games are playable and content-complete, though that's currently based on just 48 titles.

Relying on downloadable software to run physical games creates several problems. Players with limited data caps don't want to burn through them on a game they bought on disc specifically to avoid downloading. Xbox servers also recently went down, which meant some players couldn't launch games they owned. Most importantly, this situation is turning into a nightmare for game preservation.

As servers get shut down over time, the ability to download necessary files will disappear along with them. The more games depend on downloads for a complete playthrough, the harder it becomes for archivists to save them.

PC gaming lost mass disc support a long time ago, but Sony ditching disc trays feels different. A PC gamer can still buy a disc drive, grab an old game on disc, and run it if they want to.

Old discs do cause headaches when they're incompatible with modern Windows, though. Running older games often requires a 32-bit or 64-bit installer, or some kind of compatibility layer.

PS6 buyers won't have that option at all, and forced changes like this will inevitably make life harder for physical media fans and pile more work onto archivists.