Sony ending physical disc production in 2028, going digital only

[Moloch]

PlayStation will lose half their fans after this decision.

Sadly, they probably won't. :-(
This market is an oligopoly. Nintendo and Microsoft will do the same thing.

 

[BejitabroFZ]

It's all absolutely grim, yet at the same time I hold on to the (very) thin hope that this finally causes normies to see the writing on the wall in regards to modern gaming. It's unlikely, but surely there's gotta be a breaking point even for them

 

[What's His Face]

Sony IE just shot themselves in the chest with a Howitzer.

The whole point of owning a console comes in three layers:

1. Physical Ownership - what's yours is yours.
2. Lesser introduction cost at the cost of quality.
3. Exclusives.

However...

1. Sony just lost the physical ownership argument, which is what they've wanted for years as digital means leasing instead of ownership, and gives Sony the ability to fully control the consumer after purchase. They can revoke your ability to launch a game for whatever reason they deem appropriate, truthful or not. They can remove your purchased content at any time, as they're about to with 400+ movies.
2. Sony is losing the lesser introduction cost argument as consoles are now being priced similar to lower-end PCs running similar specs but without the ability to upgrade later.
3. Sony only has exclusives so long as they have enough hardware adopters to make exclusives financially viable. If people don't buy their digital-only machine, they can't afford to keep their games exclusive.

With that said...

1. What Sony IE may do is turn the Playstation brand into a digital storefront akin to Steam. However, their biggest hurdle is consumer trust. They have not been proven to be as consumer-friendly as Steam. They do not offer the same level of sales and quality content as Steam. They have proven themselves highly susceptible to hacking, data breaches, and personal consumer information loss. This is NOT a healthy trio of issues.
2. What Sony IE may do instead is ape the Switch, as information have been hinting at. However, players already HAVE a Switch, and there are dozens of hardware options for PC gaming 'on the go.'
3. What I fear Sony IE may do instead is take the Netflix route and become a fully streaming service - no download, no ownership, no consumer rights.

CAN Sony IE succeed at this? Well, yes. They have trained a good chunk of gamers to seek their hardware for their latest fix of yearly installment sports games, for starters. The name brand still exists in the minds of gamers who are now parents. FOMO is a hell of a drug - especially if one considers that Sony may simply go the route of setting up temporary exclusivity deals with publishers to ensure that mega-huge games will be on their digital machine/storefront/streaming service FIRST...and PC maybe a year later (as has been the norm with the Grand Theft Auto series).

What happens next is in our hands. Personally, I wasn't interested in buying a PS6 what-so-ever after the colossal failure of the PS5. And even then, I own about 25 PS5 games total (with one being digital that I keep forgetting I own as it's not on one of my many shelves - that Astro Bot thing). PS4? 150 games. PS3? 175 games. PS2? 225 games. PSP? 75. Vita? 35. PS? 125. All on disc, all mine. As you can see, I'm a bit of a collector. Not hardcore like you see on those YouTube channels where the 80's rejects moans suggestively about "hidden gems" or what-not. But if I see a game I like, I buy - just not at Ebay/Amazon scalper prices.

I've not used Steam much as I didn't have a gaming rig until last year nor an excuse to get into PC gaming for financial reasons (see above). That has just ended. If Sony IE cannot provide me a reason to accept their lower quality gaming on their weaker hardware in exchange for physical ownership, then I have no reason now to abstain from Steam.

 

[Morgan Katarn]

Piracy will increase a little buy it wont affect sony Sadly Sony will keep making millons becuse most people dont give a shit like we do.

 

[diet_orange]

but you know what they should CUT DOWN THE PRICES since we no longer get physical copies or booklets or really anything real lol.
nintendo has some nerve with their empty "key cards" being 80$, god damn...

There's an argument to be made for books, magazines, and comics as well. But that's getting into a whole area of off-topic discussion

I don't use modern consoles, but I think you're gonna see a lot more people wait for a sale. That is if they exist

 

[PhaseJump]

It's all absolutely grim, yet at the same time I hold on to the (very) thin hope that this finally causes normies to see the writing on the wall in regards to modern gaming. It's unlikely, but surely there's gotta be a breaking point even for them

Breaking point for what though? Next to nobody even used their optical drives for multiple hardware generations. Physical games are now just annoying trash, with no benefit.

Normies are just downloading updates and playing Fortnite or Call of Duty, while subscribing to online features that also offer digital downloads and the convenience of not needing to swap plastic.

The writing is on the wall alright. Good riddance to physical media.

 

[Juiceala]

Nice. So:

• Delisted games will be removed from your digital collection forever. (Source: All of the delisting stuff literally happening right now)
• No more resale value.
• No more access once the servers shut down (through official channels, don't want to hear the argument of "just pirate it" as some kind of defence of the move).
• Prices completely dictated by Sony and publishers/devs - no Amazon sales or Gamestop sales or games costing less as they naturally get older.
• Download only no pop and play.
• Likely some kind of "activation limit" tied in.
• More hard drive space being taken up by every single game in a market with surging memory prices.
• Banned/Hacked/Locked out of account = Entire game library lost forever if you can't win over Sony support.

Missed anything on this anti-consumer list?

Here's another one...
Sony can now lock certain regions from certain games and there's nothing you can do about it.

 

[PhaseJump]

Here's another one...
Sony can now lock certain regions from certain games and there's nothing you can do about it.

Region locking has been around longer than the Playstation brand.

 

[extermist]

RRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-

I needed to get that off my chest..

 

[Kovlak]

As a current owner of PS5, yeah it's pretty bad imo, I play way more PC or old ass consoles.

Glad I dodged that bullet! I have two friends that have a PS5 and I see remorse written on their face.

 

[iamthemilkman]

I'm a PC gamer so physical media was never that important or even available to me but consoles in my mind are made so you can put a thing in it to run your games, at that point why even bother getting one, a handful of exclusives aren't worth a $1000 investment

I agree with this.

They want to release "at least one big game per year." That's where we're at? At least one, really? These AAA exclusives take way too long to develop nowadays. One big game per year for a system that's going to cost at least $1,000 doesn't seem worth it to me.

That said, it's been pretty bad this generation. In 2026 we've had Saros, more of a AA game, and then we'll get Wolverine, a licensed AAA game. So two games. So next-generation will be even less worth it than PS5 which hasn't really been worth it.

Consoles are going to have a difficult time next-generation with the price of hardware and software. The console market will shrink as younger generations continue to play "forever games" like Roblox and Fortnite on their PC's.

 

[BejitabroFZ]

Breaking point for what though? Next to nobody even used their optical drives for multiple hardware generations. Physical games are now just annoying trash, with no benefit.

Normies are just downloading updates and playing Fortnite or Call of Duty, while subscribing to online features that also offer digital downloads and the convenience of not needing to swap plastic.

The writing is on the wall alright. Good riddance to physical media.

Oh I just meant the idea that you don't own anything you buy digitally, & access to it can be revoked at any time while publishers charge more and more for it. It's a grim concept I'm surprised more people haven't caught on to (likely due to the convenience as you mention). And as I said, it's very unlikely that anything will change, yet I hold onto the hope that it will.

And yeah just losing physical media isn't all doom and gloom as long as emulators/ROMs exist & people have em

 

[ThunderBoy]

 

[ThunderBoy]

The future is retro.
The future is The Repo

 

[iamthemilkman]

Sadly, they probably won't. :-(
This market is an oligopoly. Nintendo and Microsoft will do the same thing.

Microsoft will announce the same thing shortly, no doubt. All of their Series X first-party games have been disc keys. Oddly enough, Indiana Jones and now Oblivion Remastered on Switch 2 are actual physical releases. I don't understand why they release incomplete physical versions on Xbox and Playstation despite discs being cheaper while releasing complete versions on Switch 2's more costly physical format. It makes no sense to me.

Anyways, the majority of Switch 2 third-party games are Game-Key Cards and it's the reason I tend to only buy exclusives on Switch 2. Pokopia is the only exclusive that's a Game-Key Card, I think.

 

[Skellerick]

Just a couple days after deleting movies from costumes libraries, how nice.

The future is retro and the backlog in endless.

 

[Vastness]

Stopping buying disks so I can buy HDDs, mount a personal server and store infinite games from infinite libraries.

 

[Majormachina]

The PS6 will literally have no games (physically).
You can't make this shit up

 

[Vardalis]

They want to release "at least one big game per year." That's where we're at? At least one, really?

They've taken "minimum viable product" and made it their entire business model lately.

 

[4C374552A1CA2638]

I’d bet anything in 20 years Steam, GoG, and itch will not be the same either.

If all of those are still around in 20 years. Anyone remember Desura? Direct2Drive (which exists as a Steam keys seller now)? Groupees wasn't just games or Steam keys, but the download-only stuff from them I had is totally gone now except what backups I made... and they already lost data before and needed users to upload stuff they bought to cover their asses! Streaming stuff like Stadia sort of counts too, I guess.

Spoiler: About Steam

Steam is too big to fail, and I chose that phrase for a reason. From what I gather, Steam relies on Newell's existence, so his departure could raise lots of uncertainty. "Everything turns to shit" is a depressing take, but would Newell's successor adhere to his values, or would they do any number of things to extract more value out of the platform and its vast parasocial userbase? Or would changes for the worst happen before he even leaves? Paid mods come to mind.

Spoiler: About GOG

GOG has a tiny slice of the pie. I can't find anything in terms of market presence, but I'd swear I read somewhere they had just 4% of the market at one time, and I can't see it being any bigger now. They have a GOG Patrons subscription which so far does not grant exclusive access to games, but like everything else here, who knows how it'll go in the future? Some publishers don't bother to keep parity between Steam and GOG patches for games, so you get an inferior or buggy edition... but it's DRM-free!

Spoiler: About itch

itch probably has an even tinier amount of pie than GOG. I can't help but think of their removal then hiding of adult games last year, but the most alarming thing was titles people paid for being removed. To say nothing about not everything taken down being explicit, leading to fears that anything could be erased if it didn't please the right people.

And that leads to another thing: Maybe all of these stores will continue as they are, but some external factor causes unwanted, damaging change. Anything can happen in 20 years or five or even one.

 

[Kovlak]

Anything can happen in 20 years or five or even one.

Given everything that happened in 2025 and 2026, in 20 years we'll be living - will we be living? - in a very very very different world.

 

[sogib]

Seems like it's not only Sony

https://twitter.com/x/status/2072353984732434597

 

[JellyjamLu]

Glad I dodged that bullet! I have two friends that have a PS5 and I see remorse written on their face.

It's funny cos' most of my interest was due to the pandemic and the demand for the system, so it was a bit of fomo truth be told.
I did have my own personal reasons wanting one too but looking back, if all that what happened in the past was not a thing, maybe there was a wacky universe where i didn't bother and stuck to PC.

 

[CheesyExplosive]

So... i guess sony, microsoft and such will be joining steam huh?

 

[Symphougi]

Burning goodwill speedrun.