Featured Image Credit: RICHARD A. BROOKS / Contributor / Getty
Sony faced the brunt of significant backlash this week after revealing plans to end all physical game production for the upcoming PlayStation console after January 2028, and many worry that it will irreversibly damage gaming as a whole.
We got a taste of what it will be like when Rockstar finally announced pre-orders for GTA 6, as while the game has already sold exceptionally well over four months away from release, many were extremely disappointed to find out that physical editions of the game would only come with a download code and no disc.
It looks like that'll be the same for games on the PS6 post-release, as all new games released on PlayStation consoles after January 2028 will be digital only — regardless of whether they've been made by Sony-owned studios or not.
That is because Sony controls the production for all games released on the PlayStation platform, so if they don't want to go ahead with physical editions there is no way for any developer to commission one independently.
The removal of player choice when it comes to purchasing games is never a good thing, and how we've seen digital console storefronts deal with a number of concerning issues so far doesn't exactly give you hope that it'll be a consumer friendly future.
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The first and arguably most important factor for most gamers is price, as physical games are not only far cheaper on average but also allow you to recoup most if not all of your spend by selling your copy on the second hand market.
Gamers who don't have the money to drop $70 or $80 on new releases are able to afford these games by selling them quickly after release, or waiting a month or two for them to drop in price through sites like eBay, whereas sales on digital storefronts are often far more expensive and take longer to be discounted.
While the PC gaming world has been digital only for nearly two decades now, that survives through wider access to games, with third-party sites (and the threat of piracy) leading to cheaper prices and more frequent sales through storefronts like Steam.
PlayStation, on the other hand, has only one storefront and it's controlled by Sony, with no incentive to reduce prices if that's the only place gamers can buy titles. Have a look at the price of some of your favorite games on the store right now, and there's a good chance they're overwhelmingly cheaper to buy physically than digitally.
Finally is the threat that this poses to game preservation, as access to digital games often requires an internet connection and servers to be maintained, even if the experience itself is entirely offline or single player.
Sony only recently removed hundreds of films that people had bought with their own money from digital libraries, and there's no guarantee that the same won't happen with digital games in the future — especially as titles have a tendency to be delisted after losing support.
The reaction to Sony's decision has been overwhelmingly negative, but one of the more common perspectives is one of hypocrisy and irony, as Sony not only played a key role in the invention of physical games as we know them today, but leveraged the opposite position against Microsoft following the reveal of the Xbox One.
"It's ironic cuz Sony played a big hand in inventing the CD," wrote one commenter on Reddit, with another noting that they also did the same for the Blu-Ray format too.
Those of us who were around for the reveal of the PS4 and Xbox One back in 2013 will remember the iconic (but now hypocritical) 'used game instructional video', where Adam Boyes and Shuhei Yoshida passed a physical game to each other in a joke about Xbox's then-new policy which restricted the sharing of titles.
13 years into the future and you'll no longer be able to do that, marking a significant shift in how people's purchasing habits and the overall direction of travel for the industry.
"Remember when they won a console generation by having two people go on stage and one handed the disc to the other," pointed out a third commenter, with another noting "how far they've fallen."
