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.
Ah. You mean the vast majority of PS5 owners who are no longer purchasing physical discs and haven't for a while. Well, that's the thing about idiots. If the vast majority of them are doing anything, the market sees that and companies react accordingly. And suddenly the majority aren't idiots anymore, they are the mainstream. And the ones whining are the idiots. And... Oh wow! We've already arrived at that point!
As for the PS6, of course they'll make an add-on disc drive for it. Too many people would not buy a PS6 if either it had no backwards compat or didn't have a way of playing their discs, but it won't ship with one and the add-on drive prolly won't remain available for the entire console generation.
The time for voting with your wallet on this issue has passed. The sales figures don't lie. 95% of people who buy games (including 100% of PC gamers) don't care about physical releases. If all of you whiners boycott the PS6, it will still sell 100 million units like every PlayStation does. Sony knows this and the sales figures make that obvious. Telling each other that you are angry, that Sony is clueless, and then watching only Youtube channels that tell you what you want to hear with clickbait titles changes nothing.
Just like when most of you were outraged over the unbelievably high price (!!!) of the Nintendo Switch 2 (23 million sold) and Mario Kart World (14 million sold) a year ago. Nintendo were greedy idiots and were about to go out of business. And now some of you think Sony is next.
And for those of you adults who are concerned about being able to afford one of these new consoles: Sell all that crap collecting dust on the shelves behind you, including but not limited to TUBBZ, plushies, Funko-Pops, wearable loot, and 3D printed Legend of Zedla dildos. And since disc drives are going away anyway, sell those hundreds of physical games you haven't played in years and realistically won't and that you only keep to impress your easily-impressed friends.
Problem solved. Welcome to the discless 10th Generation of Video Gaming!
The real outrage here should be that the prices should plummet to at least 75% because now there is no Printed Physical disc, no Disc Boxes, no Printed Covers, no Retail delivery, No Storage costs, no Secondary Retail Costs and so on. Thats the real Fuckup in my opinion.
So you actually believe that 75% of the price of a game is the plastic and paper it used to ship in? I mean you remember Sony spending $400M on Concord and only shipped ~25,000 copies, right? You need help with that math on that one or can I trust you know how to use AI to figure it out for you? Games cost more than ever to produce even if they are digital-only. The real fuckup is how the educational system failed you.
My issue with the game key cards is that it allows Nintendo a loophole (read: weasel way out) of being forced to preserve the game in the event of server access being closed off.
The GKC is a cart with an expiry date; you just don't know when yet (as of this writing).
The fact that every Nintendo shop they have ever had, including the Wii shop, are still up and available for you to redownload your purchased games... How effing long do you people think you are going to live anyway? And will greedy Nintendo really ruin your life if you aren't able to redownload World of Goo if the Wii servers are finally retired in 2036? With all that is going on in the real world (remember that?) these days, your worries over digital-only games seem downright childish.
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