PM Studios Mourns PlayStation Disc End, Eyes AA Future

PM Studios PlayStation Disc End Stirs Grief and Reinvention

This isn't just a business problem. For the Las Vegas publisher, the PlayStation disc end has become a personal wound, a raw and aching thing that cuts deeper than any quarterly report ever could. Sony will stop producing discs for the PlayStation in January 2028. And the company that built a two-decade career on putting games in boxes, that staked its whole identity on shrink wrap and shelf space and the weight of a case in a customer's hand, is now staring down the slow death of its core trade. They're watching it happen. We've seen this before, but it don't make it easier. It's a long goodbye.

"It's sad and devastating," CEO Michael Yum says. "My first games were on PlayStation, and I'm primarily a PlayStation player, so obviously I play a lot of physical games on PlayStation."

He is not alone in that sentiment. But he is also clear-eyed about the numbers. Most new-generation players buy digital copies, and his own young children, digital natives through and through, "get confused about putting the disc in."

Two Decades of Pressing Discs

PM Studios has been in the physical game business for roughly 20 years. In its early days, the company brought the Korean rhythm-action series DJMax to the United States, and from there it grew into a quiet powerhouse of disc and cartridge production.

We back up about a hundred games or more a year on the physical side, Yum says, and a lot of that work comes from other publishers who hand PM Studios their physical releases. Sign one of those guys up. You get like 10 games a year from just them alone.

Yum's roots in the region run deep. "I had a lot of friends in Korea who couldn't release their games, so I was bringing games from Korea and China over to America and Europe." That pipeline eventually delivered the publisher's biggest bet yet.

The Black Myth Gamble That Paid Off

Black Myth: Wukong was, in Yum's words, "one of our biggest risks" when PM Studios took on physical publishing duties. The payoff exceeded anything he had planned for.

I didn't know it was going to be that big. When it took off, yeah, it was quite an experience, and I've never seen anything like that, not in all my life, not anywhere, not ever. I've never seen anything like that.

The title was so enormous that it "covered everything else" in the company's catalog. That's what makes the timing so bitter. PM Studios had just hit its commercial peak in physical publishing, a high point built on years of steady work, when Sony pulled the floor out from under the whole category, and it's a moment they can't undo. And it hurts.

"People are very upset because you're taking away a choice."

Why Discs Still Sell

Digital may dominate overall sales. But Yum argues the physical market is far from dead in specific corners. PM Studios published the kids' game Bluey's Quest For The Gold Pen, and roughly 80% of that game's sales were physical. Big franchises still do very well at retail, he says, and there is a healthy appetite for physical versions of indie titles that already proved themselves digitally, such as Animal Well. Physical isn't dead.

"I did the mass retail version with Lost in Cult, and it did extremely well," Yum says, even though a limited-edition physical run had already come out through Limited Run. "The fans come back to support the physical version of the game. The collectors are buying stuff."

There's also the simple economics of a shared object. Yum has twins, so she has a unique case. She doesn't want to buy two digital copies of the game. So she buys one, and they learn to share it and let their friends borrow it, which is a small everyday lesson in ownership that costs less than buying the same thing twice.

The loudest anger isn't really about shelf space or resale value. It's about losing the option. All of it. And that's what people are really upset about, because when you take away a choice entirely, you're not just changing what they can buy today, you're changing what they can do tomorrow, and that's a loss they feel deeply. "People are very upset because you're taking away a choice," he says.

A Code in a Box and a Premium Future

PM Studios is done with PlayStation discs. But that doesn't mean the publisher is walking away from physical goods, because Yum says the company is hunting for new formats. It's not leaving.

• "We are looking for new ways to bring the games out," he says. "It's unfortunate, but eventually it will have to probably be a code in a box."
• The plan leans hard into collectibility and fan service, with premium bundles and unique packaging.
• PM Studios is still behind the upcoming physical version of AdHoc Studio's Dispatch.

The company is also expanding into full publishing. It is handling My Time at Evershine and working with Telltale on the long-gestating The Wolf Among Us 2. Yum met the studio's CEO and offered more than marketing support.

"The biggest part was funding," he says. "I told them that I can help invest and fund this game, and I could bring in my marketing team and production team operations to help finish the game in a timely manner."

Betting on AA and Watching China

The publisher's stated aim now is to "take bigger risks on bigger IPs." That's the shift. And it's a shift that mirrors a broader industry move, because Singapore-based GCL Global Holdings, once built around physical distribution, is now betting on AA publishing through its subsidiary 4Divinity, a company that's staking its future on a different kind of bet.

Yum sees real potential in the AA space. Why? Digital storefronts are so crowded that standing out is brutal. And people are "a little bit more excited for AA games" thanks to graphical quality, he says, because when you put a video out there, people tend to look at the flashier stuff, so it just happens to attract people more easily.

He insists PM Studios remains a "big champion" for indies. The company was among the first to release Switch 2 games with the full game on card, and it plans to use wins from bigger titles to fund new indie experiments. Risk still gets managed carefully, though, with an eye on attached IP, sequels, developer credibility, and wishlist numbers.

Speed impresses him most. Chinese studios are fast, very, very fast, and Yum says they're very hungry and very talented, which is a combination that makes them dangerous. They're making games way faster than everyone else, way cheaper than everyone else, so if the rest of the world doesn't keep up with them, they're going to take over. Tencent and NetEase own everything. They already own the industry.

Panax and the Last Stand for Physical

PM Studios is not surrendering the collector market quietly. It recently launched Panax, a community platform built to bring together fans of physical games and merchandise. Development took years.

It recently went viral. That's because of this trophy tracking thing we posted, Yum says. And I can't wait until everybody sees all the new features that we put in and all the benefits that the publishers will get by being on this platform, which is something we've been building toward for a long time. They're going to love it.

Discs may be fading. Yum and his team will keep pressing the case anyway, right up to the end.