PS6 Could Ditch Built‑In Disc Drive, Let Players Buy External Unit for Physical Games

Rumors around the PlayStation 6 say the console will ship with a 1TB Gen5 SSD and no built‑in disc drive. These details, courtesy of well-known hardware leaker Kepler_L2, suggest that storage is one of the main areas where Sony can reduce production costs, and that opting for 1TB instead of larger capacities could help keep the PS6's retail price down. Does that matter, though, when experts think the console could cost somewhere around $1,000?

Sony might also add support for neural texture compression (NTC) in the PS6 toolchain. This would reduce game installation sizes by compressing texture data more effectively. NTC uses AI models to store and even reconstruct textures, with some texture sets showing installation size reductions of up to 7x, resulting in lower GPU VRAM usage.

NTC targets textures and other visual assets, so it would not reduce every part of a game equally, but it could ease storage pressure if engines and developers adopt it for PS6 releases, Gamerz Theory reports.

On the hardware front, however, one could say that any push toward a digital‑only base model could be concerning among players who prefer physical discs, as they can be shared, rented, traded, or resold. While the PlayStation 5 launched with two versions, one with a disc drive and one without, the option to buy a PS5 with a built-in disc drive has always existed.

This time, it's suspected that Sony will launch the PS6 with no disc drive at all, offering only the opportunity to buy an external drive accessory. As we swing through the next couple of years, we'll learn more.