Summary
Sony has just announced on their PlayStation blog that they will stop the production of game discs starting January 2028. This effectively means a shift away from physical media to one that fully relies on downloading content from the PlayStation online store. Although not technically confirmed, this announcement would strongly indicate that the PlayStation 6 will do away with its optical drive altogether as previously speculated. Of course, physical media has long since been on the ropes, particularly when it comes to gaming. Valve’s recently released Steam Machine doesn’t feature an optical drive, and for that matter, neither does the average gaming PC these days. But it’s still disappointing to see in many ways. Although digital downloads have their advantages, a major problem here is that due to Digital Rights Management (DRM) you only ever get a license to lease a game. This means losing the ability to lend or borrow a game, and will likely mark the end of second hand sales. With narrow exceptions such as Good Old Games (GoG) and its DRM-free installers that you can e.g. burn onto a CD or copy to a USB drive as a static instance of the software, this shift by Sony effectively ends game ownership for PlayStation owners. It’s a good opportunity to boycott the PS6 and Sony products in general. They’ve been long enough in business, anyway. If a company had done this a few years back, I’d have said it would have been the end of them, but these days, perhaps there are enough kids who’ve… Who knows, one generation from now, they might never have even seen one in real life. Personally I think this will hurt their current sales, enough games companies have come and gone over the years, it’s a gamble, but no doubt they’ll continue to operate, surely they’ve got enough pennies squirreled away to weather the transition. That just after closing PS3 and PSVita online services (so you cannot download purchased digital games for those anymore) and removing hundreds of movies from the store (so you cannot watch any of those anymore even if you purchased them). Like they say, “if buying isn’t owning, pirating isn’t stealing”. Boomers? My 21 year old son is a game system collector and recently spoke to me about this. He and I share a dislike of non-physical media. Unless they come up with a way to give you a physical presence of “I own that title” I’ll avoid cloud based versions of content. Further, as my son mentioned, it turns the gaming world into what we’re now seeing with streaming. Selective showing of titles that come and go, with absolutely no requirements. What titles stay and go? Who makes that choice? Is this another battlefield like net neutrality? Transfer of ownership is another problem with this model. I buy game X. I don’t like game X, not my style, or I’ve finished it and want to take it out of my collection but allow someone else to pay me for that copy I bought new…..WHAT COPY?? You bought bits, or more accurately RENTED them. Without putting in a lot of time and materials you have no easy way to put it into useable storage that you own. You can’t go to a flea market and try to sell your games because they’re not YOURS. But the video game makers will gladly still charge you the same prices for that product. Even though it does not truly exist. I’m happy with the systems I have. Which as NOT QUITE A BOOMER include the old Atari VCS, Playstation 2, my Atari 800XL with fujinet, and an arcade emulator machine. So this doesn’t directly affect me. But be warned that this is another way to monetize entertainment that leaves you with NOTHING tangible. Not without effort and equipment needed to make your own physical copy. If I were a modern day gamer, it might make me think long and hard about purchasing a product that does not support the physical copy versions. Well pretty much the majority of stores including everyone’s favorite. The nearest solution is the customer doing their own “fixing into a medium” their copy. Blame websites like GBAtemp for this, instead of the company Xbox has also confirmed the same Physical disc stopped being ownership years ago for many games, with DLC and up-to-date patches required to play because of online components. Physical is fine for games with no online, but pointless once online is required.