Coming out of Sony over in Tokyo this week was some industry shifting and seismic news. From 2028, PlayStation will no longer produce physical media for its games, there will be no discs for its first-party games.
The industry has been pulling in this direction for a long time, but PlayStation is the first company to come out and say it. Going forward you won't be able to buy their games on a disc, and it likely means the PS6 won't have a disc drive either. If that is the case, third-party companies will therefore by default not be making discs either, at least for the PS6.
Now, you may have guessed, but here at Mochi Mart, we are in love with the physical medium of games. We love them and celebrate them. The nostalgia of games gone by and the newest releases in our PS5. So, for me and everyone else working at Mochi Mart this is incredibly bad news.
There are many reasons why ending physical media is a bad thing, but probably one of the most scary outcomes was actually demonstrated by Sony just days prior to this news dropping. Sony revealed they would be removing a selection of purchased films, totalling over 500. This meant that anyone who had previously bought these titles would lose all access to them. Essentially, these consumers paid to have movies in their digital libraries for an unspecified period of time, one that is now over.
Without warning, without a refund, without any control over the situation, that is the future of Sony's digital ecosystem. That is a scary prospect. It feels like consumers are no longer buying products from Sony but taking a gamble on how long they will have access to them.
This is terrifying for anyone who loves PlayStation as Sony will have its games exclusive to a digital storefront. That means if you want to play a new God of War, Spider-Man 3, the next Ghost game, your only choice will be to buy it straight from Sony. They can charge you whatever they want, they don't have to go on sale. There is no competition, no other digital storefront exists on a PlayStation, there is no second hand market for these games with cheaper alternatives.
As a consumer, options and a variety of choices is the best practice for us. Being able to shop around for deals, and find alternatives means we are not beholden to the whims of a face-less organisation whose main goal is to make as much money out of us as humanly possible.
The industry is marching towards a bleak future, leasing game content, all-digital consoles, crazy hardware prices, rising software prices, huge layoffs and studio closures. Something needs to change, and Sony, this is not it.