They already have Slim versions of the PS5 without the optical reader by default. The PS5 Pro also lacks one.

This is all data-driven. There's a reason GameStop has more space devoted to Funko Pops and shirts than games, and why Walmart has a half aisle of them: people predominantly buy the games online for that exact reason. Why waste space? So you have to get up to change games, and save downloading half of it? (PSN sales often beat retail pricing as well.)

We're at the point where a lot of games are larger than a triple layer BluRay, and typical home connections are faster than the reader can move data. Baldur's Gate 3 didn't ship on a disc at all, for that reason. It's 122GB, and Gran Turismo is in a similar range.