Sony is moving away from physical discs, will soon only release PlayStation games digitally

Veho · 2026-07-01T14:59:30+0100

They have data on all games sold and played on their platform, and the user purchasing and playing habits, and if their data shows the majority of PS owners buy digital and it is worth scrapping the physical media manufacture and distribution and the expense of losing the stragglers who still want physical copies, it's their decision to make. The problem is that games get pulled from the store all the time for any number of reasons and there is no guarantee you will be able to download them in the future, and the PlayStation has very limited capacity so it's not possible to archive all the games you want to save. Most games, even single player ones, require some kind of constant online support already means you're at the mercy of the service provider, and games can and do get shut down forever even if you do have a physical copy, and now there's a real possibility that you won't be able to download them either, even if you "own" them. Which sucks massive amounts of ass.

Izual Urashima · 2026-07-01T14:59:53+0100

Multiple discs would have been the solution. They cost way less than HDDs (so more margins for Sony), it would have been better for preservation's sake (so Sony could have shown themselves as "the good guys", for better sales), and Sony could have used their own production factories to make discs as weak as possible (to ensure players wouldn't be able to preserve their games as they're willing to do now).

But for that, you'd need to have someone more intelligent than current Sony executives. Oh well.

Axido · 2026-07-01T15:00:06+0100

When I was young, I didn't have the money to buy games. Now that I do, they don't want to sell them to me anymore. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

M7L7NK7 · 2026-07-01T15:03:53+0100

Chary said:
According to the most recent financial report from Sony, only 3% of PlayStation's annual sales came from physical software releases

3% of sales but 90% of the internet is complaining

K3Nv4 · 2026-07-01T15:06:54+0100

Axido said:
When I was young, I didn't have the money to buy games. Now that I do, they don't want to sell them to me anymore. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Easy solution, buy storage won't have money for games.

Hanafuda · 2026-07-01T15:09:49+0100

tech3475 said:
So are we still complaining about game key cards?

whynotboth.gif

ZeroT21 · 2026-07-01T15:12:33+0100

It's all digital for me now as I only play on PC, legit or not :gun:

Moogley · 2026-07-01T15:15:31+0100

On the same day, this news also dropped: gamers are moving away from Sony, will soon only play PlayStation games on retro consoles.

Huh. What a coincidence.

Post automatically merged: Today at 3:17 PM

GBA_4evR said:
I just won't buy Playstation games anymore and move to PC and Nintendo Switch 2.

Remember that even the physical games on Switch 2 aren't usually physical. They're just digital access keys. The main difference between Nintendo and Sony isn't their mission - it's just their marketing.

NONE of these companies want you to own your games, except maybe Valve.

Veho · 2026-07-01T15:17:18+0100

Sony is moving away from physical discs, or as they say, "A physical disc a day keeps the Sony away."

K3Nv4 · 2026-07-01T15:19:36+0100

Coincidentally going all digital will make archiving ps5 much easier once full cfw gets released so we can thank them in that aspect.

Taleweaver · 2026-07-01T15:19:58+0100

M7L7NK7 said:
3% of sales but 90% of the internet is complaining

That sounds a lot like the internet I know.

PDave92 · 2026-07-01T15:20:37+0100

Moogley said:
NONE of these companies want you to own your games, except maybe Valve.

Nail on the head here. The death of ownership is an awful thing, and it's why I still have a lot of old games from when I was a kid. I have them physically, no Internet access or accounts required. The model companies are moving to are what make the most money - even if they're anti-consumer.

HarveyHouston · 2026-07-01T15:24:57+0100

I'm saddened by this, but not at all surprised. This is just going to make game archivists work harder to preserve games.

PDave92 · 2026-07-01T15:29:16+0100

HarveyHouston said:
I'm saddened by this, but not at all surprised. This is just going to make game archivists work harder to preserve games.

The game preservation movement has saved so many games that I loved as a kid. I will always support that cause.

Renos44 · 2026-07-01T15:42:39+0100

Moogley said:
NONE of these companies want you to own your games, except maybe Valve.

Valve is usually the most lenient bit even still if you severely violate Steam's TOS they are more than happy to nuke your entire account games and all, And publishers on steam do retain the ability to revoke licenses and delist games.

Anyway I'm not surprised by this at all I called it years ago the PS5 and XSEX would likely be the last console with a disc drive.

There some reasons why this is happening IMO

1. From a hardware production standpoint disc drives are
Loud
Power hungry
Take up a large chunk of physical space
Causes vibrations
Give off heat
Designers have been trying to get rid of them for years.

2. Blu ray disc and drive production are at an all time low and may no longer exist within a decade outside of niche spaces.

3. Games are hitting the 100gb limit for a single disc. And while yes you could ship on 2 discs or even use that quad layer 128gb disc These costs extra and our lovely publishers hate anything that eat into profit margins.

4, Digital sales make waaaay more money than physical sales. Though it will be interesting to see how retailers fight against this cause this is a huge chunk of sales going poof.

JuanMena · 2026-07-01T15:46:03+0100

I still remember this E3

Hambrew · 2026-07-01T15:49:13+0100

Ooooooooops :rolleyes:

codezer0 · 2026-07-01T15:51:00+0100

If you thought Nintendo was already ass backwards charging msrp for 10 year old games digitally, Sony is about to ramp up the douche another few orders of magnitude by banning accounts and consoles to force repurchases. Unless competing storefronts are allowed to exist on these consoles, this is a death knell.

Digital only consoles.

SaudiCraft · 2026-07-01T15:52:02+0100

It seems illegal because they attain a monopoly on the store where they alone set the prices. Apple and to less degree Valve (even though its false for Valve because PC is an open platform) have gotten a lot of heat from wallgardening storefronts where there's no competitors. What makes Sony any special? This can easily go to court.

MikaDubbz · 2026-07-01T15:53:35+0100

Honestly, I get it. I may not fully love it, but I totally understand it at this point.

When it comes to music, I still collect Vinyl of my favorite albums. But the reality is, in practice I'm only actually listening to digital FLAC files of all music through streaming services like Spotify. And I mean that literally applies to all the music I digest.

Now, of course, the difference is with games, you typically aren't going to stream them (I mean you can, but the speed for that with a typical large games, just still isn't there for that to be preferred), so you need to download and install them, and so many games are huge these days, to the extent that you can quickly fill up even 2TB of storage and getting additional storage will cost you more money (as no one is going to want to regularly delete and re-install games if they don't wish to buy more storage). This to me is the biggest issue with going digital-only with video games in this day and age.

Yet even still, I do ultimately understand how this digital-only future in the gaming landscape is going to be an inevitability for the major console providers. People will complain, they'll riot, Sony may even walk back the idea (for a bit), but if we reach a point say 2 decade from now, and physical copies of new video games are still a thing, I will be genuinely shocked.

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