Sony is moving away from physical discs, will soon only release PlayStation games digitally
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."
This announcement comes in the same week as Sony faced backlash for removing digitally purchased movies from user libraries, which many commenters are noting as poor timing.
Source: GBAtemp / PlayStation Blog
Comments
This... fucking... sucks.
Here I was kind of praising Sony that, unlike Microsoft, they offer many games in physical distribution... !anymore.
It's fine, as long they offer options for people to make it physical themselves - see my comment below 😉
It's a big thing in gaming, though, the physical medium. Especially for the old guard remembering the first few generations before the Internet.
Sure, there are some instances where this doesn't work, like games that are being constantly updated w/ new content, making the physical medium obsolete after the first update, but otherwise the physical has more advantages, including 'free' storage. The game's already on the disc / game card. Downloading those requires a lot of storage space.
What I do not like about the concept of DLC is that I have the idea (idea, I have no experience in the game world for more than ten years) that they can release half games. Just how they release mediocre software and patch it later. You know, car radios didn't need updates... They just worked. 😒
Yup. The day 1 updates are a bane of today. Indeed, the mindset of way too many people is to just release something in a broken state && patch it later, which should be criminal.
As for the DLC, the original concept was fine. They'd offer some additional levels, modes, or whatever, but it's been bastardized by greedy fucks, so now we get games w/ content intentionally cut out of them precisely for the reason to sell that cut content as DLC.
Yeah, I can believe that DLC was once a gift to the gamers - and that greed fucked it up at a certain moment 😒
Hmm, yeah, in some way, why not? It is actually a waste to produce CDs when not needed. But, at least distribute binaries that will work until the end of time - as long as you have the right operating system. On top of that, to make that possible, just turn off the key check or whatever after ten years (because their authorization server would not live that long 😉).
'As consumer preferences (...)' this makes me wonder from where they are getting their data. Because any self-respecting gamer prefers the physical copy.