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

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Sony made a shocking announcement today, revealing that the company plans to move away from physical game releases in the future. Citing claims of how the industry is moving away from physical copies and disc-based games, and prefers digital media, PlayStation will follow suit, and will only release PlayStation games digitally. Starting January 2028, physical disc production will end, and you'll only be able to purchase video games through a digital format, either from retailers or PlayStation themselves.

According to the most recent financial report from Sony, only 3% of PlayStation's annual sales came from physical software releases, with projections for that already low number set to fall even further through the end of the PlayStation 5's lifecycle.

As consumer preferences and the broader entertainment industry continue to shift away from physical discs to digital, physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting January 2028. Following this date, new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only. This transition has no impact on games that already released, or will be releasing, prior to January 2028 in disc format.

This is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs. This transition will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today.
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Sounds about right, I've been fully expecting/preparing for PS6 to be all-digital. Didn't necessarily think they'd announce it this soon though, might drive a decent chunk of their users toward Nintendo and Valve instead. Steam is the only trustworthy all-digital platform as far as I'm concerned. Heck, you can even make your own physical copies with BD-Rs! :lol:
 
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ChronoCrossfangirl2002 said:
Would this also mean potentially also losing backwards compat with future sony consoles? because that'd suck alot.
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From a physical perspective, that's a high probability. They may not see the need to include a drive with the PlayStation 6 if it's only good for PlayStation 5 discs. What people are entirely missing though is, with the death of the disc drive, that basically puts question marks over the existence of Blu-ray as a whole. One of the novelties of a PlayStation starting with the PlayStation 3 was the ability to watch Blu-ray movies. So unless they decide to include a drive for movies at the bare minimum, we may be seeing an indirect plan to kill off Blu-ray eventually. I am willing to bet they will claim "most people stream" as their reason too.
 
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Techjunky90 said:
You are laughable at best. You complain about PC gaming & then go on to talk about Linux as if you know anything. SteamOS is absolute trash for gaming, just like every other Linux OS. The only people that make baseless claims about SteamOS being good are people that are absolutely clueless on the subject. When doing a proper comparison, Windows ALWAYS beats Linux in gaming performance. The "comparison" videos you see on YouTube are not legitimate. The crappy little articles written by AI are not legitimate.
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It is not about digital vs physical. It is about ownership. I don't buy any game on PC unless there is a DRM/cracked version available. This is the case for 99% of games on PC. The nature of the PC being a general computing device facilitates the ownership of your files. Consoles, not so much. Windows may be moving away from being an open system but Linux will always exist
 
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Xzi said:
Sounds about right, I've been fully expecting/preparing for PS6 to be all-digital. Didn't necessarily think they'd announce it this soon though, might drive a decent chunk of their users toward Nintendo and Valve instead. Steam is the only trustworthy all-digital platform as far as I'm concerned. Heck, you can even make your own physical copies with BD-Rs! :lol:
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What happens to Steam when Gabe dies is a concern. I think employee-ownership would be smart. Valve mustn't go public or the banks will be calling the shots.

For employee ownership to work the firm might need to expand, meaning it will need to buy studios or hire their staff. Now would be a great time for them to make a start.

They could do worse than buy Sega, but I expect that would be blocked.
 
I want to start escrow crowdfunding page to fight against this. Bounty will be accumulated for reverse engineer that sucessfully find unpatchable exploit for greedy companies platforms.
 
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szubiennica said:
I want to start escrow crowdfunding page to fight against this. Bounty will be accumulated for reverse engineer that sucessfully find unpatchable exploit for greedy companies platforms.
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Ooh, I got an email the other day from a Nigerian Prince, whom has had his billion dollar account frozen. He claims for only $100, it will un-freeze his account, and he will release to me $1million and the jailbreak for Switch2. I wonder if he can help with this also.
 
To Sony company,

You are full of s**t and stupid for to kill physical copies discs. I will stop buy games and no more digital systems for me. I love to shovel you to death into graveyard. When PS6, PS7, etc release out then I will refuse to buy your video games and consoles systems no more! I love you to death! Means your sales will face major poor sales of digital video games and digital only hardwares. Your business will crash then turn into disaster! That's real story and real truth how awful for digital video games and digital only systems will stop working then go straight to landfill for massive wasteful and useless!

Same apply to Nintendo and Xbox will lost business if force to use digital only means companies will lost benefits then shut down for good reasons to death!



I'm happy to have my retro gaming consoles with physical copies for many years to come. I refuse to sell my old retro gaming consoles. When I have kids / children then I will let they to play old school video games anytime. I'm happy to have few gaming computers for to play my favorite PC physical copies and lot of piracy video games.

It's my rules are stick with old school consoles systems with physical copies are winner over digital period!

All digital will go die and gone forever! F to all digital video games and digital only consoles systems to death!


Anytime in one day for people have plan to destroy energy grid nuclear plants buildings in near future will put huge risks on all digital systems, AI buildings, Data center buildings, etc will face massive outages and impacts to internet when go knock off permanently. Major damages to all companies, businesses and industries around in our world to disaster! Let people blow up power grid energy plants to destroyed anytime soon in near future! No lies!


Old school rules forever with physical copies are winner and you can't force us and people to buy stupid digital only things! You will learn your own mistakes lessons about stupid digital things!

Let hurt and damage to all companies, businesses and industries to lost profits, benefits, sales, etc to disaster!


All digital only are full disaster and BS! Let all digital go to die! All digital only will go to doomed without warning!

Please ignore all digital only forever and never look back at digital only! Physical copies for us and people forever! You can't judge us and people about stupid digital only period!

Old school rules! Amen!
 
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LusoPlayer said:
For the third time: even if that was the case, 100 GB fits in a single UHD BD disc.
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Look, I don't know or care what conversation was going on, as it doesn't seem relevant to the thread itself. My comment is about the fact that they are moving from discs to digital only, in an era when games are poorly optimized and massive.
 
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DeadSkullzJr said:
From a physical perspective, that's a high probability. They may not see the need to include a drive with the PlayStation 6 if it's only good for PlayStation 5 discs. What people are entirely missing though is, with the death of the disc drive, that basically puts question marks over the existence of Blu-ray as a whole. One of the novelties of a PlayStation starting with the PlayStation 3 was the ability to watch Blu-ray movies. So unless they decide to include a drive for movies at the bare minimum, we may be seeing an indirect plan to kill off Blu-ray eventually. I am willing to bet they will claim "most people stream" as their reason too.
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Makes me wonder if ps6 does go full digital if rpsc3 team will get a c&d letter I'm sure they obviously know how well that's performing wouldn't be that hard to make a ps3 emulator work on ps6.
 
K3Nv4 said:
Makes me wonder if ps6 does go full digital if rpsc3 team will get a c&d letter I'm sure they obviously know how well that's performing wouldn't be that hard to make a ps3 emulator work on ps6.
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Unless that emulator uses encryption keys or code that they shouldn't be using, I don't think Sony can do anything. If there aren't any attack vectors to go after, then it can exist freely. The emulator simply existing isn't a good enough reason to kill it.
 
Oh man. No thank you Sony. I am done and staying with my PC the next generation.

On second thought, a jailbreak doesn’t need a disk, and we can use it as an external hard drive anyway.
 
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DeadSkullzJr said:
Unless that emulator uses encryption keys or code that they shouldn't be using, I don't think Sony can do anything. If there aren't any attack vectors to go after, then it can exist freely. The emulator simply existing isn't a good enough reason to kill it.
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Don't know how old it has to be they could maybe count using firmware update files?
 
DeadSkullzJr said:
Unless that emulator uses encryption keys or code that they shouldn't be using, I don't think Sony can do anything. If there aren't any attack vectors to go after, then it can exist freely. The emulator simply existing isn't a good enough reason to kill it.
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tell that to nintendo
 
Maybe they will sell a portable drive disk separately for profit, unless they’ve said there won’t be any discs at all. I bet the fans will protest, and they will listen and release a separate portable version. I doubt.
 
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