The Fifteen Percent Sony Couldn't See

Sony is cutting a line that accounts for about 15% of its sales — and more than 320,000 people signed a petition to stop it. That gap, between how small the cut looks and how hard people are fighting it, is the most useful thing an operator can study this month.

On 1 July, Sony announced that from January 2028, new PlayStation games will be digital-only. No more discs for new titles. Download it, or don't play it.

On the numbers, this is the easiest decision a business ever makes. In the quarter ending this March, about 85% of PlayStation's full-game sales were already digital — 15% physical, and falling. The revenue gap is starker still: roughly $1.5 billion of digital that quarter against $109 million from discs. A shrinking, expensive, low-margin sliver. Any competent operator looks at that and reaches for the knife.

So sit with the strange part. Three hundred and twenty thousand signatures. A €400 million class action in the Netherlands, a £2 billion case in the UK. Politicians, retailers, even late-night comedians. Why would anyone fight that hard to save 15% of somebody else's sales?

That is the whole question. And the answer is a distinction most leaders never make on purpose — the difference between managing a line item and leading a relationship.

Be fair to Sony first

The honest version of this is stronger than the cheap one, so let me make the case for the decision before I turn it.

Sony's stated reason is true. People genuinely moved to digital — nobody made them. When four out of five games sell as downloads, keeping a global disc-manufacturing and distribution operation alive for the fifth is real cost, real complexity, real inventory, for a shrinking return. Put that in front of a hundred CFOs and a hundred of them cut the disc.

And the revolt, loud as it is, mostly comes from people who already buy digital. It's real in voice and a minority in wallet. The market didn't disagree with Sony. The market mostly already agreed.

So this is not a story about a stupid decision, or a greedy one. If it were, it wouldn't be worth your time. It's worth your time because the decision is defensible, the logic is clean, and it still might be a mistake — and the reason why is the part that transfers.

What the 15% was actually holding up

That fifteen percent wasn't just fifteen percent of revenue. Watch what it was doing.

The disc was the last thing that let a customer own a game. Buy a download and you don't own it — you licence it. If the store delists the title or the servers go dark, the thing you paid for quietly disappears. The disc was the proof of purchase you could hold in your hand.

The disc was the entire resale market. Every used copy, every lend to a friend, every trade-in — gone. As one analyst put it, every resale and rental is value flowing to players and retailers instead of to the platform. The disc was that value, in physical form.

The disc was the ceiling on Sony's own prices. As long as a physical copy existed, a price-sensitive buyer had somewhere else to go — the used shelf. Remove the disc and the only door left is Sony's own store, at Sony's own price, minus Sony's 30% cut. In the Netherlands, buyers already pay roughly 47% more for the digital version than the physical one. The disc was holding that number down.

And here is the one nobody saw coming. The disc was Sony's own legal defence. For years, whenever regulators came sniffing about monopoly, Sony pointed at physical retail and the used-game market and said, in effect: look, there's competition, there are alternatives, we don't control the whole thing. A marketing professor at Johns Hopkins said it cleanest — by phasing out physical discs, Sony essentially destroys its own defence. Cut the 15%, and you hand the plaintiffs their argument.

Ownership. Resale. A price ceiling. A legal shield. All of it riding on the line item that looked small enough to cut.

Managing a line, leading a relationship

In the work I do, there is a tension that sits underneath every growing business, and this is the cleanest example of it I've seen in a public decision all year: the tension between leading and managing.

Managing is making sure the right things get done, the right way, at the right time. Execute the plan you've got. Drive out cost. Remove variance. Hit the number the quarter is asking for. It is a real, essential, honourable job — and it is exactly the job that kills the disc. Everything management is built to do points at that cut. The disc is cost. The disc is variance. The disc is a shrinking line on a page.

Leading is a different job. Leading is about beliefs and behaviours — moving people, and a business, toward a future that doesn't exist yet. And leadership asks a different question than management does. Management asks: what does this thing cost me? Leadership asks: what does this thing hold together?

Sony answered the management question flawlessly. Fifteen percent, shrinking, expensive — cut it. It never asked the leadership one. Because the moment you ask what the disc holds together, you get a completely different answer, and you would never dare touch it.

The company that forgot why it won

The sharpest proof that this is a management decision wearing leadership's clothes is that Sony has stood in this exact room before — on the other side of the table.

In 2013, Microsoft launched the Xbox One with restrictions on resale and an always-online check. Gamers revolted. And Sony — this same company — stood up and made a promise: the PlayStation would let you share your games, resell your games, keep your games. No restrictions. That one customer-first stand won Sony the entire console generation.

That was leadership — not the warm kind, the sharp kind. In 2013, Sony understood that ownership was load-bearing. That people would forgive a lot, but not the feeling that they didn't own what they'd bought. Sony read the belief under the behaviour, and led to it.

Thirteen years later, the same company is making Microsoft's 2013 bet. The exact one it beat. It is looking at the same disc — the thing that won it the war — and this time it sees only the cost.

That is the switch. Same company, same decision, same disc. In 2013 they led it and won. In 2026 they're managing it, and calling it the future. The disc is where you can actually watch a business trade one for the other.

The operator's read

You don't run Sony. Neither do I. But you have a disc — I promise you that. Here is how I'd use this.

01 — Go find your disc

It's a line item that's small on the P&L and load-bearing for trust. The free tier almost nobody converts from — but everybody checks before they buy. The phone number a human still answers, that costs you a salary and gets used twice a month, and is the reason a customer picked you over the cheaper option. The no-questions-asked refund. The founder who still replies personally. Small on the spreadsheet. Holding up the ceiling. You know what yours is.

02 — Change the question before you cut

Management will tell you what it costs, and management will be right — measured directly, it probably does cost more than it earns. That's not the question. The question is what it holds together. What breaks the day it's gone. Sony could see the 15% of revenue with perfect clarity. It could not see the ownership, the resale market, the price ceiling, and the legal defence — because none of those show up on the line you're cutting. They show up everywhere else, later, all at once.

03 — Protect the thing that won you the market

The thing that won you your market is very often the thing that looks least efficient on the way up. The generous policy. The slow, human, expensive touch. The stand you took when it cost you something. Management logic flags exactly those first, because they're the ones that don't pay for themselves in a straight line. So when you catch yourself about to optimise away something that used to be your whole edge — stop. That's not fat. That might be the spine.

The takeaway

Most operators think the danger is the big, obvious cost — the thing everyone is watching. It isn't. Big costs get scrutinised precisely because they're big. The thing that gets you is the small line — the one so clearly inefficient that cutting it feels like discipline, and that nobody notices is holding up four other things until they're gone.

Sony found its. Fifteen percent of sales, and one hundred percent of the reason its customers believed they owned what they bought. On the spreadsheet, an easy cut. In the relationship, load-bearing.

Management asks what a thing costs you. Leadership asks what it holds together. Before you cut the small thing, find out what it's load-bearing for.

That's what I have for you this week. Operator to operator. I'll see you next week.

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This is Episode 9 of Commander in Brief. The tension at the centre of it — leading versus managing — is the first of the three tensions in Resolute, in print since December 2024. For the deeper version, read The Three Tensions. For the same kind of decision made the other way, read The 8,500 IKEA Didn't Fire.