The LEGO PlayStation Opens a Disc Tray Sony Is Ending

Sony and LEGO priced a 1,911-piece replica of the original PlayStation at $179.99, with a lid that still opens. The adult set, numbered 72306, appeared at State of Play on September 3, 2026. The same grey box that taught a generation to press Open is now a shelf toy, while new game discs have a January 2028 end date.

Steffi Steffen, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s senior director of licensed merchandise, framed the kit as a 30-year souvenir rather than a working machine. The bricks still copy the ritual. They just do not play a CD.

What the 1,911-Piece Set Puts on a Shelf

The LEGO PlayStation is an 18-plus display kit that rebuilds the 1994 console and its first controller at near 1:1 scale. Finished, it measures over 6 cm (2.5 in) high, 26 cm (10.5 in) wide, and 19 cm (7.5 in) deep. The US price is $179.99 including tax, with £139.99 in the UK, €159.99 in Europe, and ¥27,980 in Japan, also including tax.

THE 72306 SPEC SHEET

• Piece count: 1,911 bricks in a set aimed at adults, not a child’s first build.
• US price: $179.99 including tax, listed as coming on October 4, 2026 for general buyers.
• Scale: A near 1:1 grey box, 26 cm wide, with a plug-in brick pad on a cable.
• Moving parts: Tactile Open and Power buttons, plus a lid that lifts like the old tray.

LEGO’s Billund press note, dated September 3, 2026, calls out those functional Open and Power buttons as the point of the build, along with a controller that actually plugs into the front. PlayStation’s official reveal trailer, posted the same day on its YouTube channel, runs 1:49 and walks around the closed lid before it lifts.

A designer named Fred, speaking on that trailer, said the job was to get the dimensions right and recover “the real feel of the console back in the day in 1994.” The YouTube write-up also promises a working disc lid and two interior scenes “packed with easter eggs.” There is no brick CD in the box.

Open and Power Buttons You Can Still Press

LEGO wrote the set as a memory of the 1990s start-up sequence: plug the pad in, press Power, press Open. The grey silhouette is the original chunky deck, not the later slim PSone. The controller is the first digital pad, the one with no analog sticks.

That is a strange partner for an Ape Escape scene. The 1999 game was the title that made Sony’s analog sticks feel necessary, and this kit still ships the earlier board. Builders get the click of the buttons and the lift of the lid. They do not get a laser, a spindle, or a disc to drop in.

Whether you have been with PlayStation since 1994 or are a newer fan, we hope you enjoy building a piece of PlayStation history with this upcoming LEGO set.

Steffi Steffen, Senior Director, Licensed Merchandise, SIE, PlayStation Blog

History, in this case, is a display object. The press copy talks about “the ritual and excitement of ’90s gaming” and then sells a model you cannot switch on. For anyone who still owns the real grey box, the bricks are a second console that never asks for memory cards.

Sony Set a January 2028 Cutoff for New Discs

On July 1, 2026, Sid Shuman, SIE’s senior director of content communications, said physical disc production for all new PlayStation games would stop starting January 2028. Games already out, or due on disc before that month, stay as they are. After the cutoff, new titles go to PlayStation Store and to shops as digital copies only.

Shuman called the shift “a natural direction” because “the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs.” The company is still taking that January 2028 disc cutoff into hardware plans, and the plan to leave new discs behind is already public. Two months later, the merch team put a working tray on a $179.99 toy.

Announcing the LEGO PlayStation set, a nearly 1:1 scale reproduction of the original 1994 console.

The 1,911-piece project arrives later this year: https://t.co/1X2aNaC6zg pic.twitter.com/QCtWvTjKwJ

— PlayStation (@PlayStation) September 3, 2026

The official announcement post did not mention discs at all. It called the kit a nearly 1:1 copy of the 1994 machine and pointed at the blog. The first useful question the photos invited was whether the tray even comes with a brick disc. It does not. The louder read is simpler: Sony will sell you the lid as nostalgia while it dates the format the lid was built for.

FROM GREY BOX TO BRICK BOX

1. 1994: The original PlayStation launches in Japan, the machine this set copies.
2. 1997: Gran Turismo ships, the racing game now reduced to a slide-out track.
3. 1999: Ape Escape ships, later remembered here as a helmeted monkey on an island.
4. 2010: PlayStation Move Ape Escape arrives, the last new game in that series.
5. July 1, 2026: Sony says new PlayStation game discs stop in January 2028.
6. September 3, 2026: State of Play reveals set 72306 with a lid that still opens.
7. October 1, 2026: PlayStation Direct and LEGO Insiders can order the bricks.
8. January 2028: New PlayStation games go digital-only at retail and on the Store.

A plastic Open button does not reverse that calendar. It just makes the calendar easier to display.

Gran Turismo Gets a Track; Ape Escape Gets a Helmet

Pop the lid and two small builds sit inside, which Steffen’s post describes as removable Gran Turismo and Ape Escape dioramas. LEGO’s note says they can stay hidden in the chassis or come out and sit beside the console. That is the one trick the grey box never had.

WHAT SLIDES OUT OF THE CHASSIS

• Gran Turismo: A miniature track with scaled-down cars, nodding to the 1997 racer.
• Ape Escape: An island scene whose monkey helmet light swaps between blue and red.
• Display choice: Both scenes seat inside the console or pull free as separate models.
• Other secrets: PlayStation says the build hides more history details for people who look.

The two games are not in the same place in 2026. Kazunori Yamauchi, president of Polyphony Digital, used the same State of Play to announce Gran Turismo 7 Spec IV, a free update in two parts in October and December 2026, billed as a warmup for the series’ 30th anniversary in 2027. Ape Escape has not had a new game since 2010. Japan Studio, which made it, was wound down in 2021, with Team Asobi kept on. The monkeys now show up as cameos in Astro Bot and in a Snake vs. Monkey mode. One pull-out is a living series. The other is a souvenir of a series Sony stopped making.

Nintendo, Atari and Mattel Already Built This Shelf

LEGO has been turning dead hardware into adult kits for years. The Nintendo Entertainment System set 71374 launched in 2020 with 2,646 pieces and a $229.99 US price, plus a brick TV and a Super Mario Bros. cartridge that slots in. The Atari 2600 set 10306 followed in 2022 with 2,532 pieces at $239.99, three mini game scenes, and a joystick; LEGO retired it in December 2024. A Game Boy kit came later at $59.99. Sega got a cheaper Genesis/Mega Drive model in 2026.

Microsoft skipped LEGO. Mattel Brick Shop is selling a 3,509-piece original Xbox kit for $329.99, due October 1, 2026, with a Duke pad, lights, sound, and pull-out scenes from Halo, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and Psychonauts. Sony is late to a format Nintendo opened, and it is cheaper than Mattel’s Xbox, with fewer parts and no soundtrack chips.

CONSOLE KITS ON THE ADULT SHELF

The PlayStation kit is the smallest of that group and the only one whose headline moving part is a disc lid. The NES set at least pretends to take a cartridge. The Xbox set lights up. Set 72306 asks you to press Open on a tray that will never spin.

Where LEGO Insiders and PlayStation Direct Line Up

PlayStation Direct starts taking orders on October 1, 2026 in 11 markets: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. LEGO Insiders get the same date online, with membership required for LEGO purchases from October 1 through October 3. Everyone else can buy on October 4, 2026 at LEGO.com, LEGO stores, and select retailers, matching the shop page’s Insiders early access from October 1.

That split puts Sony’s own store and LEGO’s loyalty list three days ahead of walk-in traffic. It is the usual adult-kit funnel: members first, then the public, then whatever secondary listings appear once people open the box and count the printed tiles. State of Play also showed limited Grand Theft Auto 6 DualSense pads due later in September, so the brick console is not the only souvenir from the stream. It is the one that will still be sitting on a desk after the controller codes sell through.

Japan’s general on-sale date is October 4, 2026, at ¥27,980. Direct’s 11-country list does not include Japan, so the path there is LEGO’s own shops and site. Anyone who wants the set on day one needs either a Direct account in those 11 countries or an Insiders login.

A Working Grey Box Still Sells for Less

The price argument started as soon as the photos did. A first PlayStation could be had for $100 on a clearance shelf years after launch, and used SCPH decks still trade for less than $179.99 in most markets. The bricks cost more than the machine they copy, and they do less. That is the deal, and it is the same deal LEGO already proved with the NES and Atari kits: you pay for a weekend of building and a shape that will not yellow as fast as old ABS from 1995.

The missing brick disc is the tell. Nintendo’s NES kit gave you a Game Pak. Atari’s kit gave you cartridges. Sony’s kit gives you a lid and two interiors, then leaves the tray empty. People asking whether the set is “physical or digital” are joking, but the joke only works because the company dated the real discs in July and then spent September selling the hole they used to occupy.

On October 1, Direct and Insiders will find out how many of those empty trays the 30-year fanbase still wants to build. The grey box on the shelf will open. It just will not read anything.