in europe it's often cheaper to buy a game new in box from the retailer than from the PS Store. Not for long maybe. I will mourn the loss of physical games as they are such a big part of console experience
With this news, I have to wonder how much longer bluray will live.
Will we continue seeing new bluray releases of movies and TV shows for decades, or are their days numbered?
The loss of console gaming presumably removes a guaranteed revenue source that was keeping Bluray pressing plants alive.
Sales of DVDs and Bluray have been declining for years [1][3]. Some people have been excited pushing the news that UHD bluray sales increased in 2025, [2] but that ignores the fact that the total optical sales still dropped.
> With this news, I have to wonder how much longer bluray will live.
I hope that physical media sticks around. DVDs and Blu-rays often include something that digital releases don't: director's commentaries, "making of" featurettes, and other extras.
For me, it adds a whole new layer of fun to movies I already like.
I can't imagine content owners wanting the physical media to continue any longer than they can get away with. The control they have from digital only must make them feel so powerful. At least as long as everyone continues to buy into their DRM systems.
I've recently looked into purchasing a dedicated 4K Blu-ray player to start building a disc collection again. I'm assuming there's some pretty decent deals in the used bins now. One by one, I keep canceling my streaming subscriptions. At some point, that physical media will be the only thing left. Makes me feel like a prepper of a different sort
I do this. I'll buy used disks and rip them to a personal media server. It works great. A friend actually created an eBay bot which monitors listings of disks he wants and will automatically buys them.
The ripping part is a bit annoying and time-consuming though. Ironically, it would probably be easier to buy a disk then download a file rather than ripping.
I've been doing this as well. Occasionally I'll have a disc that fails to rip for some reason (maybe my drive is more sensitive to defects than my player is, or there's some stupid copy protection scheme), and then I'll torrent it. Torrenting is always easier and faster, though it's hard to find special features this way.
That's part of what I was thinking. The idea of digital-only must be very attractive for content owners, so I don't think they will put much effort into preventing that outcome.
Collecting is going strong, though. My husband collects physical media, and media books, including a booklet and a nice cover, sell very well. As are special editions of more mainstream movies. Give people something extra and they will gladly buy it. I'd have expected them to go down that path, sell nice steelbooks, media books with an included art book and so on. Add a blu ray with interviews about the development process and so on. I'd pay good money for that and others would as well. Even if they sell the console only with an external disk drive.
Hilariously, DVD production could potentially outlive Blu-Ray discs, since DVDs are still popular enough 30 years later, and surpass the sales of Blu-Ray movies.
Why is that? Vinyl has some unique characteristics. But as far as I’m aware, blu-ray is just a storage format for bits, so other than the box art, what is compelling about a blu-ray pressing?
I saw my first Dolby Vision Blu-ray and immediately started a Blu-Ray collection. The Blu-ray player on the PS5 is fine, but a nice dedicated player from Sony blows it away.
I would pay for my favorite albums on Blu-ray too. I wish more artists released their entire discography on a really well produced Blu-ray. NIN would be perfect for this. So many Halos, so many videos, all in release order. A real release of Purest Feeling?
it typically offers better video processing and upscaling, more accurate color reproduction, cleaner gradients, and superior HDR handling (including dynamic tone mapping on some models). Many also support Dolby Vision from UHD Blu rays, which the PS5 does not.
It won't show on a bad screen that much, but a dedicated player will squeeze out more of the disc.
Even if Sony keeps a token factory or two open to produce blu-rays, I'd imagine we'll see fewer and fewer new releases. Maybe we'll only see them as part of collector's sets that have enough margin to afford a cut of the more limited supply.
This feels like the beginning of the death spiral for blu-ray. Sales aren't going to go up enough for it to be worth it keep factories going, much less spin up new ones.
Years ago I did a podcast[0] on physical media and hypothesized UHD would be the last physical movie format (and was shocked that it was even a thing).
The next two years are probably going to be a mess as collectors snatch everything up annd inventory gets cleared out.
UHD bluray isn't really a new physical format. It's the exact same physical format as regular bluray. They didn't change a thing except move some previously optional parts of the bluray spec (like three layer discs, and 33GB per layer) to being compulsory.
I don't think we have ever seen something like it before. A new media format that breaks backwards compatibility, yet uses the exact same physical medium as the previous version. Some people did attempt it with HD movies on DVD, but the attempt failed so badly I don't think it even counts.
Its very existence was a very strong signal Bluray would be the last optical disc format. And the launch of the PS5 without a new optical confirmed it.
But is there enough of a market for blu-rays of newer western releases in Japan to keep the entire production and distribution chain alive around the rest of the world?
They won't be releasing new Blu Rays for decades. Outside of collectors, why would they? Unless there is a hidden market for the discs elsewhere it's not worth it
I don’t know the stats but I would guess more people have DVD players then Blu-Ray, so it makes sense for libraries to rather offer DVDs. DVDs is also one of these things that is good enough. The jump in quality between DVD and Blu-Ray is very unnoticeable (when fully immersed) compared to e.g. between VHS and DVD (or even between vinyl and CD).
Well, if Nintendo and Microsoft go the same route (and sadly, I see that being almost inevitable at some point), that's probably the end of my interest in gaming as a whole. I generally refuse to 'rent' or 'license' things on a temporary basis, and have decided in this generation that every game I'll get for Switch 2 will be a physical game on cart version, without exception.
And the reasons for that are pretty simple. I like being able to resell games when done with them. I like being able to lend them to friends, or play them on as many consoles as I want. I like the idea of having something that companies (generally) can't remove due to licensing changes or an always online requirement.
This sort of change just feels like yet another step towards constantly renting rather than owning, or streaming games and media without any control over how or when you can use it.
Gaming is in a really tough spot right now, and it's not being made easier by the drain AI has put on chip and RAM prices. It's absolutely insane that Sony and Microsoft have had to raise prices on their years-old consoles.
Discs are less convenient so people have slowly moved to digital sales. This worked even better for console manufacturers, cheaper to drop that disc reader, and the second hand market is effectively dead which increases new game sales.
The side-effect most people didn't consider is that you never really own a digital copy. And the most relevant part is that you cannot transfer/sell a digital copy. For everything else around ownership I know I can count on Sony to still screw it up even with discs, like disabling a disc game with some online checks.
I wouldn't think that the copy of some movie Netflix is streaming to me will be 60-100GB over the duration of the movie. Not to mention when their services have issues and you're watching 5-10 minutes of low quality content until it settles and snaps up to full (streaming) quality.
Most people really don't care, which is a shame. The sheer quality difference between a 4k digital movie and a 4k bluray is astounding. Hell, oftentimes a standard bluray looks better despite the lower resolution since it isn't being compressed
Theres no technical reason one should look better than the other.
Both should use multipass ahead of time compression with a rate control algorithm, and both should have enough slack streaming bandwidth to handle complex scenes with buffering
A 4K movie uncompressed would be something like two or three terabytes depending on the format. I think Arri are the only cinema cameras that can even shoot uncompressed or losslessly compressed, the rest shoot lossy compressed video in their native raw formats.
Uncompressed 24-bit 1080p running at 24 FPS requires 1.192 Gbit/s, or 0.149 GByte/s. So a 25 GB (single-layer) blu-ray has enough space for a whopping 167.8 seconds of uncompressed 1080p video running at 24 FPS. You can double that with a dual-layer blu-ray, and there are more corners you can cut, but I don't think you'll fit your movie in there.
Video is really big. Compression was needed to make it even vaguely possible unless your quality was in the toilet.
HD-DVDs were smaller, so they were more compressed.
I don’t think that you guys should be debating compressed vs uncompressed, but lossy compression vs lossless compression. Your math seems to derive from a naive storage format.
Blu-ray is lossy too. All video codecs of note that aren't for professionals are lossy, so the point mostly still stands. Lossless compression doesn't go very far when it comes to video.
An uncompressed 24 bit 1080p image is just under 6 MB. If you save it as a compressed PNG, you cut that down to roughly 2.5 MB. Now, PNG compression isn't very efficient, and you can probably do some interframe magic if you really wanted to (cf lossless h264), but the whole exercise is mostly futile, since even if you cut your bitrate down to an eighth, you're still looking at, like, 20-ish minutes of runtime with 25 gigabytes.
Meanwhile, blu-ray looks as good as it does at an average of 25-30 mbit/s (0.03 gbit/s) (while UHD blu-ray even more so, with a better codec, so even more detail is preserved). The compression used saves so much space the trade-off is obviously worth it unless you're a production company making an actual movie, where every detail counts.
What's kind of an annoying side effect of this is that you have all this fancy new display tech, like quantum dot LED (marketing term, but w/e), or OLED, but it's all pointless because you're just watching it with crappy compression, negating the quality gains.
The football World Cup 2026 is being broadcast in 1080p with washed out colors. Yet every shop was advertising 4K OLED for the best experience of watching the matches.
It's a weird trajectory to see because with the music industry people have started catching on and either support sites that offer more durable forms of ownership or have straight up reverted to physical ownership.
It's from a 2016 essay. I'm not sure it was ever only a joke. I didn't even perceive it as a joke back then (unless you wanted to joke about companies being knobheads). It was already clear by then that that was the direction they wanted to go.
Adobe Creative Cloud became the only option for new Adobe software in 2013, 3 years before that essay. Sure, Adobe is on the forefront of being knobheads, but still.
> Sony's announcement follows Rockstar's announcement that Grand Theft Auto 6 will come with a download code in a box rather than a physical disc. It's a move that most notably stamps out second-hand reselling of a game.
This is the big point for me. If one buys a digital PlayStation game there's virtually no easy way to transfer it to another owner or sell it like one could do in past console generations. There will always be modding and ways to play game dumps, but it limits that level of "ownership" to those technically inclined to make it work.
> There will always be modding and ways to play game dumps
There won't because advances in defensive cybersecurity have made it so that software exploits are extremely rare (if they exist at all), and modern chips contain hardware defenses against electrical attacks like voltage glitching.
Closing the online store for older systems simultaneously with announcing the dropping of physical media leaves an interesting question for the future. Even if you’ve never bought an online PS3 or Vita game, you’ll still be able to use the systems for physical games. Presumably once the PS6 store is gone, any console is just an ornament if you don’t have access to an account with games already purchased (and how long will the download servers stay up anyway? What is the foreseeable future?).
I was having this discussion with my 9 year old yesterday. He mentioned that a friend had Rocket League on their Switch 2 and "it didn't even need a game card". I told him that anything without a physical card can be taken away, the company that made it can decide to take it back or to stop letting it work. Compared that to my old DS which he found along with game cards for Lego Star Wars and Scribblenauts that still work ~20 years later.
I think he "got" it. He was certainly annoyed at the idea that something purchased could just be taken back. Maybe it'll stick and he'll be better able to understand why I'll push back on a new PlayStation or any digital only games.
theoretically, the playstations are the most vulnerable since they run static versions of a FreeBSD derived system. the xbox doesn't really need to be jailbroken and the switch line is nearly impossible
Werent early versions of the Switch 1 jail broken pretty fast and people were dumping switch 1 roms online to play in emulators?
I don’t follow this stuff too closely but I thought that I saw people playing the sequel to Breath of the Wild on PCs to get acceptable frame rates when it came out.
Shit, they tried a while ago with a lot of pushback. I hope they don't. I love my vita, and while realistically anybody playing one nowadays has it hacked and can get games from wherever they please, it sucks that the only official way is going the way of the dodo
This is why I will not be buying a PlayStation 6. I've had my Steam account for 20 years (21 come October) and I can still download every single thing I've ever bought there. Why should I invest in buying PS6 games when they're gonna be made obsolete by Sony?
If I am being a bit pedantic. Yes you can still download your old games, but they will likely be different from the original release. Grand Theft Auto games are known for dropping songs from the soundtrack due to licensing.
If you have Vice City on DVD and install it you can still enjoy Michael Jackson. Not with the Steam version.
Why would anyone “buy” movies from PlayStation. That’s not their business, I would never have expected them to be in it for the long haul, just like MS did a rug pull on this a few years ago didn’t they?
Why not? Maybe people already have an account there with payment set up, the console hooked up to the TV and soundbar and don't want do sign up somewhere else?
Furthermore, Sony Pictures is huge, so selling movies is absolutely part of Sony's business as a whole.
Convenience? Maybe a belief the media would be accessible for a long time, versus the ever-changing catalog available from streaming services?
Consumers are lured into walled-gardens all the time - consoles, app stores, hardware. Where would you suggest someone purchase a digital license for a movie?
Most games with retail copies drop in price soon after the hype window is over. They stay full launch retail price in the PSN store unless there is a "sale". Anti-consumerism at its finest.
I wonder if that's because there's a downward price pressure on physical inventory because it needs to get liquidated to free up physical space for new inventory.
That's certainly a factor, especially if demand was less than predicted, stores don't want to hold on to stock that's not selling, distributors and manufacturers don't want it returned. Better for everyone to reduce the price and sell the product.
I've reached an age where I don't actually buy games anymore, I just load up my wishlist with games and between Christmas, birthday and fathers day I get all the games I will care to play for the year. My wife, parents, extended family likes being able to buy me a physical gift, wrap it, and hand it to me. I understand that this is just getting rid of the disc and keeping the box, but pretty soon there's gonna be no box either, and I know my wife will hate the idea of just handing me a gift card on special days. I just hate how all physical products are evaporating.
I have a PS4pro; technically I also already own a PS5 (kid-brother arrangement; not currently in my possession). When he gets his PS6, I'll get my PS5 back... then still keep the PS4 (always been offline: RDR2; GTA5; &c).
If Sony doesn't offer GTA6 on disc, offline: I'll sell the PS5, too. I just got a 5070Ti, so it's probably back to PC-MasterRace I'll go...
Reasons like this [Sony's 2028 disc-stop] are exactly why I won't be purchasing a PS6. At least (in Sony's defense) they're telling us oldtimers about this now, as opposed to on the day of [stopping disc retail sales].
In contrast, Nintendo's idea to sell physical games that are essentially transferrable keys seems like a much smarter compromise.
Part of the appeal for the Switch and Switch 2 is the stability of their resale market. It's easier to pay for a new game when you know you can get 50% of your money back on the used market.
Sony wouldn’t see any benefit from switching to game key discs. Nintendo introduced them to save on manufacturing costs, but game key discs wouldn’t give Sony any additional market or reduce costs any; they’d only shrink the physical market further.
Guess I’m throwing my PS5 out the window and going to PC. This war on physical media is ridiculous. Pretty soon they’re going to require us to buy the console but rent the controllers for the very low price of $79.99 a month.
Valve have shown themselves to be reasonably trustworthy unlike say, Sony and Microsoft. If there are no disks then there is no point in consoles in my view, they're just worse computers.
Steam only exists because Valve forced players to install it, force an online activation, and permanently bind their retail copies of Half-Life 2 to a Steam account. They also forced patching which meant in an era of dialup you couldn't play your single player game for hours, and needed to be connected every 30 days or your game would stop working.
None of the console manufacturers pulled that shit, that Valve gets a pass is wild to me.
plus, nothings stopping you from distributing a physical PC game. Heck, iirc steam still supports it. Even if it didn't, you could still buy a physical PC anyway since they can just have an exe, flatpak/snap/appimage, or dmg
Steam normalized the loss of resale rights on PC long before the consoles caught up. Younger people don't even realize it's a right that prior generations gave up.
Yes, and it's a tragedy that people have given up so much for the shallow convenience of having a shiny launcher and not having to figure out clicking on setup.exe.
You have to be very dense to think AAA video game devs have some woke agenda and not just knee-jerk reaction to market changes. There are plenty of games for you to goon to.
Steam has existed for an eternity compared to any console specific game store. It's not great that you can't resell what you have on Steam, but at least you get to 'keep' it.
I never understood why disc versions of current gent console exists at all. Don't @ me about internet speeds: even if game does come on a disc, day 1 patches got out of hand before this generation was launched or in works.
Exactly this. Today I can get a physical copy at release date for ~10 EUR cheaper than on the Playstation Store, then resell it for 3/4 of the price, or lend it to a friend easily.
Everything about digital-only is anti-consumer. Games will be more expensive with fewer and less important discount, the second-hand market will be dead, and so will be sharing games to friends so they can experience it for free.
Nintendo has implemented lending a digital game, but with arbitrary limits (you HAVE to be in physical proximity for the lending process, it lasts a maximum of two weeks, and you can lend 3 / borrow 1 game at a time). Sony and Microsoft don't let you do that.
One reason is control. You control the physical media. You can sell it, you can buy used games, let people borrow them, etc.
This affects less people, but there are also many who like collecting them. Physical objects are nice, especially if you've been keeping all your old games for old consoles.
Which also ties into control of course: you can still play your games, even if the companies that made them and the console no longer exist, buy old games from retro shops, buy new games for old consoles from new indie devs, etc.
> One reason is control. You control the physical media. You can sell it, you can buy used games, etc.
Unless that game ties to your account and disc becomes useless, or you game need a day 1 patch or day 412 patch or game is online or disc actually just a dummy that lets you download the game. Yes, the (in)convince of physical media totally worth it just so can sell what I got for $40/60/70 for $4 store credit at gamestop. All to have less control than I have from digital download from steam or GOG on PC.
Because Sony and all digital publishers with the exception of GOG are lying thieves. This is just another step in getting rid of ownership, and we are too naive and passive to stand up against it. Physical copies are a must to retain any sense of ownership over purchased games. If this is done, it must be forbidden to show "Purchase" on playstation store as that implies ownership,which it will never be. Also just look at the parallel issue that happened exactly these days with Sony deleting purchased movies from libraries. The same will happen with games. This is legalized theft.
I saw a photo of Destiny 2 for same at Walmart. First, game is Free-to-Play for years now, second version of a game that is on that disc cannot be played.
Tell me how does physical disc protect ownership? Then compare it to my digital downloads in steam where I can just copy game files between computers (if it's DRM-free)
> Also just look at the parallel issue that happened exactly these days with Sony deleting purchased movies from libraries. The same will happen with games.
I don't think Sony is much to blame here. They lost rights to distribute that content, so they can't distribute it. Blame copyright laws, not Sony.
If the console is diskless, it will be the last console I ever buy from that company. Sucks to say that about Sony but this is an incredibly out of touch move, that will always linger in the back of gamers minds that it could be tried again in the future if rolled back.
Disc consoles are superior in nearly every way:
- Disc consoles also have a hard drive, best of both worlds.
- You own the physical game. You don't own the digital version, just a license to it, which can be revoked, and deleted.
- You can trade games in 2 seconds.
- People can collect and play hundreds of games over the years on an moments notice, not waiting to download something. Games do try to compete to have the most of the players time, but it's not how all gamers play.
- Patches are normal for all games, and patches are usually smaller sizes than the entire game.
- Vintage is kind of popular now. None of those vintage systems, the original PS1/2/3/4 or Nintendos would be able to be experienced easily or at all if the physical media still didn't exist and survive. Digital platforms disappear when the system is EOL. Emulators can help, but it's a specialty and niche crowd. Handing a Nintendo to kids is something else.
That will put them in direct competition with Steam, though.
Suddenly their cheaper console will result in way higher cost for the lifetime of the console.
Killing the used market is a very bad idea. Remember what happened with xbox?
In a few years Sony executives will be wondering why a portion of their consumer base decided to prioritize other forms of entertainment. I can speak for myself in that I’ve never upgraded past the PS3, and I feel no regrets about it.
I personally see no reason to buy anything more than a PS4. I have a PS3 and it plays all the same kinds of games I'd want to play on a 4 or 5, with similar graphical fidelity. I have a 4, but only really have used it to play a remake of a game I can already play on the 3. I also have a vita which is used for indie games since that thing has nearly every indie game you'd ever want to play available (either officially or via homebrew)
They've also been pushing digital-only PS5s and PS5 Pro so there are fewer reasons to get a disk if you have no disk drive. They have created the problem that they are "solving."
PS4 is a great system, but I feel it may be my last Sony console. Steam Deck/Steam Machine will probably become the king of the household, as I don't see video games ever really leaving my life.
The PS5 is great. We have a PS5 and PS5 Pro, both with disk drives (internal or external). But I really hate this policy. My brother comes over regularly to watch my pets, and he can simply bring a couple of his PS5 games over and play them rather than rebuying them and digitally downloading them. This breaks the in-person social aspect of gaming and game sharing that we've become accustomed to for decades.
We will own the games we purchase digitally if we change the laws to say that we own them. We've reached the point where politicians are talking about this issue, and I suppose support for copyright reform will only continue to grow.
TBH, 100% offline gaming has been problematic since day-one patches became the norm in the PS3 era. Sure, you might be play version 1.0 of the game from the disc, but often the experience was pretty compromised without the patch, often very buggy, or sometimes even features missing.
And the PS5 is meant to be able to play digitally downloaded while disconnected (at least the ones you own, not the PS+ games). It's just the implementation is little buggy, it sometimes breaks for some people and you get a bunch of vocal people complaining about how it doesn't work.
So IMO, you aren't losing much there. The digital-only experience isn't that different from needing to have internet to download a day-one patch.
It's the used game sales that are the biggest loss from this move.
> I'm curious whether Nintendo will be following the same path.
Probably, they're already heavily invested in digital-only games, e.g. virtual console, or selling game boxes with just a download code.
But this goes back years already, physical copies of their games have remained expensive for ages. Relatively modern and/or very common "everyone has these" games like various pokemon games going for full price to 2-3x that.
Unlike Steam keys, there are no ways to distribute Playstation keys outside of Playstation platform. By removing retailers and second hand markets, what exactly would make Sony or any other publishers to continue offering any deep discounts on their products on a closed platform, especially when their biggest competitor Xbox has dropped the ball heavily.
I'm in the UK, and CeX is a great shop to trade in a game for store credit once I'm finished with it, then pickup whatever I want to play next. Most of the time I can completely cover the cost of the next game with the credit received from the trade, or use some store credit leftover from a previous visit!
When a Sony studio Insomniac Games were hacked and a lot of internal documents were leaked, there were statistics for Sony's first party titles and their sales stats and what the split was between physical and digital sales[0] and for some of the titles, they sold mostly physical compared to digital. Apologies for poor quality, couldn't find a better image
Due to the steam sales and deep discounting its easy to buy games on steam for much cheaper then the consoles. For console where a game may be £60 for several years, buying physical means you can resell. For anyone with a budget, it makes a huge difference on how many games you can play.
I wonder if this signals anything about Sony's attitude to blu-ray movies. Aside from games one of the reasons their consoles have sold well is because they've been excellent physical media players. The PS2 for DVDs and the PS3 onwards for blu-ray.
If I remember well PS3 was during the period where blu-ray lasers were production constrained and more expensive with Sony prioritizing their own devices, so the console was price and availability competitive against dedicated disc players by third parties. And the PS3 had pretty long term update/support. I'm fairly sure that had an impact on the financial side as it was in the era when console hardware was subsidized on the expectation they'd get a slice of game sales, except those consoles bought for primarily for movies didn't reimburse them so well.
I’m not sure if Sony has been pushing their video disc formats with PlayStations for a while. PS4 Pro was the “4K” upgrade over PS4, but didn’t support UHD Blu-Ray. And there’s been a disc drive-less PS5 since launch.
Stuff like Blu-Ray seems to be becoming a Laserdisc like enthusiasts niche system, I don’t think it’s been a big thing for Sony for a while.
The PSN store does have sales often and digital games can be up to 90% off even AAA titles. This news has me wondering how the supply of used physical copies drives game prices lower. It's possible that eliminating physical releases gives Sony the pricing power to eliminate sales, or at least cut back from the huge sales they do currently.
I really don't understand their thinking here. Sure they want more money, I get that.
But 'physical media' is one of the reasons why a lot o people make a distinction between PC and console games. Removing this will make it easier for consumers to compare a PS5 to a Steam machine, and I don't think that is a good thing for Sony.
Never been happier that I've turned into a retro-gamer. This is more the result of being old than a principled stance, but never the less. Increasingly I don't view myself as actually owning anything that connects to the internet. Minecraft is delightful on my disconnected Xbox-360, thanks. Nobody can break it by forcing an update or shutting down a server.
This was bound to happen. I’ve long suspected the #1 reason physical games exist was to placate a few big retailers like Best Buy and Walmart and Target so they’d continue to carry the console.
Clearly that’s no longer necessary. Download-only retail boxes or gift cards or whatever are enough.
I know some people really care about physical releases, but I think the writing has been on the wall for years that this was coming.
I have a PlayStation and I exclusively buy my games via discs. On the other hand, these days I exclusively buy computer games via digital download (mostly via Steam). I have more consumer confidence that digital games on my computer will remain accessible vs games on my console, maybe because Sony controls the entire console ecosystem.
Interesting timing to announce this at around the same time as the PS3 digital store is discontinued signaling that digital only doesn't last as long as physical.
My old Nintendo Wii is modified with homebrew software that keeps alive some otherwise inaccessible features since Nintendo shut off their servers. I hope the community can do similar for newer consoles when they reach the end of their life.
One of the major reasons I upgraded to ps5 was because it would also allow me to play blu-ray movies.
If the PS6 comes out with no disc player at all, not a chance I buy it.
Also, that's a definite middle finger to second hand and physical stores then ? Hoping MS will make a bet in the opposite direction (but I don't see it) and the players will follow..
Genuine question but is this why Gamestop was thinking about buying E-bay which ironically had some of the most greatest meme about "half cash, half stock" if someone remembers that in terms of the immense stupidity displayed in botching up the deal or the finances of it.
but what is the plan for shops like GameStop then if nobody buys or sells games anymore via offline shops. as you mentioned with Funko pops (and I had to search up with that), but they could perhaps transition to merchandise focused goods but I think that even within that online could have a valid competition?
> but what is the plan for shops like GameStop then if nobody buys or sells games anymore via offline shops
Bankruptcy.
They've already had to massively cut down after the first round of people switching to digital-only. I doubt they'll survive a digital-only world (maybe a rebrand will work? Or maybe they'll limp along on merch).
Ironic that you mention MS because also ironically, around the PS4 launch there was a lot of brouhaha about MS not allowing transfering games, while for the PS4 launch video they showed how easy it is to transfer games (just hand over a disk).
I hate it. I hate digital only games. I get that the numbers and reality are against my wishes but that doesn't make it any better. I want to unpack my console from storage in 20 years and play the games I bought for it even if the company or servers no longer exist.
That means that when the PS8 rolls around, any games you've bought for the digital-only PS6 will be unplayable, so think about that when you buy digital games when that (and for PS5 now) comes through.
to be fair, the "awkward snap-on disc drive" on ps5 isn't really awkward -- it's a one time install and is now indistinguishable from a built-in drive.
Some libraries let you borrow Playstation video games. I wonder if those libraries will have access to a system that allows people to borrow digital video games.
Long live independent physical game market. We already see people with 3d printed carts, designing labels and making their own homebrew games for retro consoles. Some people are also producing their own big box PC games for the hell of it.
As I continue to largely ignore AAA & mainstream gaming companies I look forward to how the indie gaming market takes advantage of everyone's growing nostalgia for physical ownership of games.
Imho this is no issue, as long as the game is playable after download without some kind of server or account.
The moment you need an account or server to play you don't own the game. I think governments should step in here. They must force stores to use words like rent or lease instead of buy. That way it is way more clear where you are going to spend money on.
From a business perspective, I understand this. The physical games sections of most retailers are pitiful these days - take a walk down the PS5 aisle in Target or Best Buy for example. They also have a need to shore up margins if they want to keep subsidizing the hardware during the component crisis. And their biggest competitor, XBox, is in the process of pivoting out of their current pivot and apparently is about to layoff a massive chunk of its workforce.
But at the end of the day, part of what makes a console a console to me is the ability to swap games with friends. If I can't do that easily, why wouldn't I just use Steam?
I guess this resource is relevant to the topic at hand. It lists games and whether you can play and complete them fully from disc without an internet connection
One huge downside for this is allowing kids to understand how things work.
A digital delivery world does not teach the same way as children learning to put a DVD into a player, hitting play, and understanding how things get somewhere.
Physical game disks, were also about community, gathering.
This is surprising because Sony obsessed over the isolation it was creating when it released the walkman.
> A digital delivery world does not teach the same way as children learning to put a DVD into a player, hitting play, and understanding how things get somewhere.
What did putting a disc in disc reader thought you?
> This is surprising because Sony obsessed over the isolation it was creating when it released the walkman.
And they have the only online storefront on PlayStation, therefore 2nd-hand market is gone. So what is surprising here?
what will happen when in 10 years they will want to discontinue those games? will they be hosting them forever?
how are we going to preserve all the videogames production from 2028 on?
The unfortunate thing is that there actually already is a government mechanism for this, in the US at least, but it's been lobbied against by the industry [0]. So like, there already is a way to do this, the same way that libraries are allowed to preserve copies of every book, but the video game industry blocks it from happening.
They aren't competing with Steam. The console market is a closed cabal where console makers sell the machine at a loss and make up for it with locked down software where publishers pay a significant proportion of the sales to the console maker, who controls supply and dealflow with private contracts.
So physical disc production is ending for new games on Playstation.
At the same time, as @outervale has said: they are shutting down PS3 and PS Vita online stores as well.
AND at the same time as @zache has said & previous discussions about PlayStation Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts.
WHILE at the same time, Dynamic pricing[0] is occuring where people who buy games are charged more because PS expects them to be able to cough up more money from my understanding
Combining all of this: No physical disc + shutting down online stores + deleting movies from customers accounts + dynamic pricing.
These might basically just be planned obsolence devices while trying to extract as much profits as humanly possible from your wallets.
I remember the dynamic pricing debate and that some people were somewhat tolerable of that, but I think that being tolerable of that is what is causing more and more precedents and an overall situation has occur where things are just increasingly more actively consumer-hostile.
Oh man, I had forgotten about GTA 6 releasing on Playstation earlier than PC's. So all the hype around GTA 6 and the fact that people have been waiting for so long would drive up the demand of newer playstations and with all the 4 changes that I talked about in one of my other comments[0]
> No physical disc + shutting down online stores + deleting movies from customers accounts + dynamic pricing.
This basically becomes a sunk cost fallacy, both in buying the games or subscription models.
Because there are people who want a game so badly and want to play on release date and that game has partnered up with a console company that they will only release (first) on some consoles with the 4 factors discussed above. It leads to an incredible sunk-cost fallacy which somewhat capitalizes on the fact of the hype of the game and they are looking for any and every ways to capitalize on it for as long as possible.
I imagine some Playstation subscription yearly discount might also happen near the launch of GTA 6 so that they could tie users up to an yearly subscription perhaps.
This is another opportunity for the EU to reign in and create a proper definition of ownership so that this does not pass.
Of course, it would be interesting to hear the freemarketeering on this site and how people should "vote with their wallet" and sites/movements such as $freeplaystation.whatever sprouting pseudopolemic nonsense.
Now Sony can take away your entire game collection at any time. If you get flagged by some random AI system and your account gets flagged you can kiss goodbye to hundreds of dollars worth of games you have.
This is ridiculous, and not long after they've been updating their ToS to require you to sign in and phone home in order to continue to be allowed access to your digital library.
> In response to shifting trends in consumer preference.
I hate this corporate speak. If buying isn't ownership, then pirating isn't stealing.
Even more reason to call this out, they know the exact figures they need to create physical copies of, they're claiming a complete trend to reduce their expenses. I don't believe they have some agenda to simply turn off games for people for no reason, but needing to check in every few months to keep a game active is actively hostile to the customer.
> If buying isn't ownership, then pirating isn't stealing.
You're not buying a game, you're buying a license to play the game. If you don't agree with the terms, don't buy that license, but that doesn't mean you're entitled to commit copyright infringement.
If I buy a movie ticket, that means I get to watch the movie once. That's the agreement.
There's an expectation that once the sale is finalised they should t be able to just take it back when they like. Agreements or not that's not how things are supposed to work.
> If I buy a movie ticket, that means I get to watch the movie once. That's the agreement.
Good thing I don't recognise copyright. Can't infringe on that which does not exist. I'm sick of pretending it does good in the world when I constantly see its consequences are things like this.
> If I buy a movie ticket, that means I get to watch the movie once. That's the agreement.
Given the amount of agreements out there that have unfair terms from the get go, or are otherwise Darth Vadered, why should anyone care what deal the corps give you?
If you don't like the deal, don't take it. It doesn't matter if you recognize copyright, it's the law. Some people don't recognize speed limits; that doesn't always end well for them.
I don't buy every game on a physical disc—I don't see the point for live service games, for example—but I do have a fairly large collection of physical PS5 games because I like that assurance that I can continue to play that game forever. I guess what we see here is that after 2028 I have no reason to own a PlayStation ever again.
On pc there is some competition at least between Steam, epic, gog (the odd one out but I like it) and such. I have no interest in buying a vendor specific computer with only one storefront and no competition.
But those are still digital-only platforms, with a chance of them disappearing. Epic is the biggest risk there, I think.
GoG is an interesting case though, it has loads of games that by and large were available on physical media, but because said physical media is either gone, broken, or in the hands of collectors, getting a physical copy of those games is difficult now. Them being a digital platform re-enables people to play these games.
GoG is also DRM free, so if GoG dies it's not like you'll lose access to your games. Even if you lose the files, archives will exist. Plus, if you're really that morally opposed to file sharing, you can always put it on a NAS or flash drive. Heck, put it on a bluray if you want to
It's important to note that that vendor specific computer is 1) cheaper then a PC that can play equivalent games, and 2) much more reliable (i never have to mess with drivers, updates just work, etc...)
I own several computers, and I use them for work. Running games on them means either running windows or running an emulation layer, and both solutions are unreliable messes. High end graphics cards are generally very expensive and have required binary-blobs that are really hard to troubleshoot, and (in my experience) always have problems.
If I want to play a video game, I turn on my PlayStation and it just works and I don't have to think about it or troubleshoot anything. This has not been my experience with PC gaming.
I exclusively play on Fedora if on pc and the only problem I had up to now was with the ps5 controller and some weird rumble input. That was easily fixed with some googling.
Sidenote but why do you use a PS5 controller? I can understand if someone already has a console they'd prefer to use the controllers they already have, but I see so many PC gamers go out and buy a playstation or xbox controller when they want a controller when 8bitdo is right there and much better for the price
Not everyone wants to do research for every little purchase. XBox and PS controllers are likely to be at least good enough, if not the baseline of quality. A few weeks ago I got an XBox-compatible third party controller with Hall effect sticks, and while it's mostly alright, I found a weird issue where when I enter a specific mode in one game by holding the right trigger I have to have the stick centered or it doesn't register for about a second. This doesn't happen with MS's controller, and I have no idea how the input device can be causing something so specific.
I used to think this was bad, but honestly? It’s just games. Some people buy tons of digital games they literally never even play. If they were physical games, imagine all the e-waste.
And what’s the point of physical games? So you can play the game in 30 years from now on some retro console you’ve diligently maintained?
Get over it, you’re not going to do any of that. There’s no mythical third act where you go through some library of physical CDs and reminisce about an old ass game. There’s constantly new games coming out all the time, you will just keep buying and buying games, you play them for a bit, and then you move on. It’s not “buy it for life”, it’s buy it for right now have fun and move on. Live in the present, don’t worry about the future.
Even people who have retro consoles and collect physical copies seem to mostly do it for collector purposes. When they die, their kids will send all that to a dump or pawn it off. Pointless.
I agree with most of this, which is why emulation is generally better unless you specifically want to operate/show off a museum.
Maybe things will be like the Nintendo BS-X where people will reverse engineer consoles with games downloaded to extract the game from it.
That being said I do have a physical Atari 2600 with a few games. Astroblast with paddles is still a fun game today, and Video Olympics (the Atari VCS version of Pong) is extremely fun to bring out at parties.
the Atari 2600 is probably my favorite console to collect for. The games cost next to nothing and old games like that are fun to just grab a stack of and play each game for 5-10 minutes each
>There’s no mythical third act where you go through some library of physical CDs and reminisce about an old ass game.
Huh? You won't replay every game, sure, but once in a while you'll find a game that you keep coming back to even many years after first playing it. The last time I played Pokémon Red all the way through was only a few years ago. I have permanent Deus Ex, Crysis, FEAR, and Duke Nukem 3D installations on my hard drive, so I can run them for a bit whenever I feel like. Maybe once you put down a game you never pick it again, but don't assume what is true of you is true of everybody.
If you enjoyed something as a much younger person, and enjoy it as a much older person, it is very unlikely that it is the thing itself that you are enjoying. To test it, you can try giving that thing to someone your age and see if they enjoy it (they will most likely think it's a nuisance). To experience it yourself, you can try what kids are into these days or even better try something that people used to like long before you were born, in which case you will very likely see these things as pointless quite quickly. If you observe these things, it is easy to see that nostalgia is enjoyable because it is about associating your youth and naiveté with the object of nostalgia. If you grew up, you would see that it is just some distraction that merchants brought to you to profit from your stupidity. If you realize this, you'll enjoy not having to deal with that shit a lot more.
>To experience it yourself, you can try what kids are into these days
What do you mean? I'll try anything if I think it will appeal to me, but I don't know any children to ask what they're into to conduct this experiment.
>or even better try something that people used to like long before you were born, in which case you will very likely see these things as pointless quite quickly.
Like how long? I like classical music. I don't really like theater. I read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and liked it; I read Martín Fierro and hated it. What conclusion do we draw from all this?
>If you observe these things, it is easy to see that nostalgia is enjoyable because it is about associating your youth and naiveté with the object of nostalgia.
No, I don't agree. I don't agree that I derive nostalgic enjoyment from the examples I gave previously. I think that I can enjoy them because they're familiar things that I can engage with as a matter of routine. I can enjoy them for the same reason I biked to work through the same route for over ten years straight without getting bored. Someone completely new cannot derive that same routinary enjoyment. For example, DOOM is basically just as old as Duke Nukem 3D, but I only played it many years later, and so I never finished it (but I also don't think I would have liked it as much back in the day; the gameplay is just not as good. I should try other Build games to see how they compare).
As another example, I should definitely feel nostalgia for Saint Seiya, but I tried multiple times just couldn't get through it. It's just for children, an adult can't miss the obvious plot holes. But I saw The Lion King in the theater and then dozens of times on VHS, and then dozens more times off my NAS 20+ years later, and loved it every time -- as an adult I just could better understand why it was so good.
>If you grew up
You're asking to be told off.
>you would see that it is just some distraction that merchants brought to you to profit from your stupidity. If you realize this, you'll enjoy not having to deal with that shit a lot more.
I don't "deal with" the things I like. I like them. Engaging with them is not something I'm forced to do that I have to cope with. Are you an alien? What do you do for fun? Stack rocks on the beach? Or is fun a foreign concept to you?
Your enjoyment isn’t pure in the sense you genuinely enjoy the thing for what it is.
You enjoy it mostly because you’ve enjoyed it once before.
Regardless, it is not even an argument for physical media, you don’t even have physical copies of these old games, and even if you did, holding the physical copy wouldn’t add anything to your experience besides a bit of novelty.
To illustrate why this is stupid, I will furnish two links to purchase Dark Souls 3 (PS4, 2016)
Ebay, to buy: $11 + shipping[0]
PS Store, to rent: $60[1]
[0] https://www.ebay.com/itm/298370753624
[1] https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/dark-souls-iii/
Yeah, and Sony agrees it is stupid... they don't want a used games market.
You've illustrated exactly why Sony is getting rid of physical media.
Money.
It's sadly not stupid from their perspective
You don't even need to go used. Discs constantly drop in price even new.
in europe it's often cheaper to buy a game new in box from the retailer than from the PS Store. Not for long maybe. I will mourn the loss of physical games as they are such a big part of console experience
I am in Europe but I just don't do launch prices on any platform or delivery form so I didn't notice that.
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/606/
With this news, I have to wonder how much longer bluray will live.
Will we continue seeing new bluray releases of movies and TV shows for decades, or are their days numbered?
The loss of console gaming presumably removes a guaranteed revenue source that was keeping Bluray pressing plants alive.
Sales of DVDs and Bluray have been declining for years [1] [3]. Some people have been excited pushing the news that UHD bluray sales increased in 2025, [2] but that ignores the fact that the total optical sales still dropped.
[1] https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=...
[2] https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=...
[3] This article has a more complete graph: https://www.statsignificant.com/p/the-rise-fall-and-slight-r...
> With this news, I have to wonder how much longer bluray will live.
I hope that physical media sticks around. DVDs and Blu-rays often include something that digital releases don't: director's commentaries, "making of" featurettes, and other extras.
For me, it adds a whole new layer of fun to movies I already like.
I can't imagine content owners wanting the physical media to continue any longer than they can get away with. The control they have from digital only must make them feel so powerful. At least as long as everyone continues to buy into their DRM systems.
I've recently looked into purchasing a dedicated 4K Blu-ray player to start building a disc collection again. I'm assuming there's some pretty decent deals in the used bins now. One by one, I keep canceling my streaming subscriptions. At some point, that physical media will be the only thing left. Makes me feel like a prepper of a different sort
I do this. I'll buy used disks and rip them to a personal media server. It works great. A friend actually created an eBay bot which monitors listings of disks he wants and will automatically buys them.
The ripping part is a bit annoying and time-consuming though. Ironically, it would probably be easier to buy a disk then download a file rather than ripping.
I've been doing this as well. Occasionally I'll have a disc that fails to rip for some reason (maybe my drive is more sensitive to defects than my player is, or there's some stupid copy protection scheme), and then I'll torrent it. Torrenting is always easier and faster, though it's hard to find special features this way.
That's part of what I was thinking. The idea of digital-only must be very attractive for content owners, so I don't think they will put much effort into preventing that outcome.
Collecting is going strong, though. My husband collects physical media, and media books, including a booklet and a nice cover, sell very well. As are special editions of more mainstream movies. Give people something extra and they will gladly buy it. I'd have expected them to go down that path, sell nice steelbooks, media books with an included art book and so on. Add a blu ray with interviews about the development process and so on. I'd pay good money for that and others would as well. Even if they sell the console only with an external disk drive.
I think blu-ray will live for quite a while, but will be a bit like vinyl; there will be a consistent, niche market.
Hilariously, DVD production could potentially outlive Blu-Ray discs, since DVDs are still popular enough 30 years later, and surpass the sales of Blu-Ray movies.
Why is that? Vinyl has some unique characteristics. But as far as I’m aware, blu-ray is just a storage format for bits, so other than the box art, what is compelling about a blu-ray pressing?
I saw my first Dolby Vision Blu-ray and immediately started a Blu-Ray collection. The Blu-ray player on the PS5 is fine, but a nice dedicated player from Sony blows it away.
I would pay for my favorite albums on Blu-ray too. I wish more artists released their entire discography on a really well produced Blu-ray. NIN would be perfect for this. So many Halos, so many videos, all in release order. A real release of Purest Feeling?
What's better about the dedicated player out of curiosity?
(Not op)
it typically offers better video processing and upscaling, more accurate color reproduction, cleaner gradients, and superior HDR handling (including dynamic tone mapping on some models). Many also support Dolby Vision from UHD Blu rays, which the PS5 does not.
It won't show on a bad screen that much, but a dedicated player will squeeze out more of the disc.
You can still buy CDs. They don't come with music videos usually but they sound greatr
>dedicated player from Sony blows it away
If I might give you a heads up here, they are not the best. For a reference player look at Magnetar.
My dream setup is a Magnetar UDP 900 MK II and a Leica Cine 1...
Even if Sony keeps a token factory or two open to produce blu-rays, I'd imagine we'll see fewer and fewer new releases. Maybe we'll only see them as part of collector's sets that have enough margin to afford a cut of the more limited supply.
This feels like the beginning of the death spiral for blu-ray. Sales aren't going to go up enough for it to be worth it keep factories going, much less spin up new ones.
Years ago I did a podcast[0] on physical media and hypothesized UHD would be the last physical movie format (and was shocked that it was even a thing).
The next two years are probably going to be a mess as collectors snatch everything up annd inventory gets cleared out.
0 - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cherry-bombs-the-under...
UHD bluray isn't really a new physical format. It's the exact same physical format as regular bluray. They didn't change a thing except move some previously optional parts of the bluray spec (like three layer discs, and 33GB per layer) to being compulsory.
I don't think we have ever seen something like it before. A new media format that breaks backwards compatibility, yet uses the exact same physical medium as the previous version. Some people did attempt it with HD movies on DVD, but the attempt failed so badly I don't think it even counts.
Its very existence was a very strong signal Bluray would be the last optical disc format. And the launch of the PS5 without a new optical confirmed it.
It has Dolby height sound encoded for x.x.4 systems
I honestly doubt they'll stop. Sony is a Japanese company, and they seem to still enjoy buying blurays
But is there enough of a market for blu-rays of newer western releases in Japan to keep the entire production and distribution chain alive around the rest of the world?
They won't be releasing new Blu Rays for decades. Outside of collectors, why would they? Unless there is a hidden market for the discs elsewhere it's not worth it
Libraries :(
My local library never made the jump to Blu-Ray and still only has DVDs. They have physical copies of video games too though.
I don’t know the stats but I would guess more people have DVD players then Blu-Ray, so it makes sense for libraries to rather offer DVDs. DVDs is also one of these things that is good enough. The jump in quality between DVD and Blu-Ray is very unnoticeable (when fully immersed) compared to e.g. between VHS and DVD (or even between vinyl and CD).
Well, if Nintendo and Microsoft go the same route (and sadly, I see that being almost inevitable at some point), that's probably the end of my interest in gaming as a whole. I generally refuse to 'rent' or 'license' things on a temporary basis, and have decided in this generation that every game I'll get for Switch 2 will be a physical game on cart version, without exception.
And the reasons for that are pretty simple. I like being able to resell games when done with them. I like being able to lend them to friends, or play them on as many consoles as I want. I like the idea of having something that companies (generally) can't remove due to licensing changes or an always online requirement.
This sort of change just feels like yet another step towards constantly renting rather than owning, or streaming games and media without any control over how or when you can use it.
GOG will let you download the offline installer for every game they sell, IIRC.
I'm guessing you know this already, but I thought it's worth saying - some Switch 2 carts only contain a game key and not the actual game.
https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/...
Gaming is in a really tough spot right now, and it's not being made easier by the drain AI has put on chip and RAM prices. It's absolutely insane that Sony and Microsoft have had to raise prices on their years-old consoles.
Discs are less convenient so people have slowly moved to digital sales. This worked even better for console manufacturers, cheaper to drop that disc reader, and the second hand market is effectively dead which increases new game sales.
The side-effect most people didn't consider is that you never really own a digital copy. And the most relevant part is that you cannot transfer/sell a digital copy. For everything else around ownership I know I can count on Sony to still screw it up even with discs, like disabling a disc game with some online checks.
And also quality.
I wouldn't think that the copy of some movie Netflix is streaming to me will be 60-100GB over the duration of the movie. Not to mention when their services have issues and you're watching 5-10 minutes of low quality content until it settles and snaps up to full (streaming) quality.
Most people really don't care, which is a shame. The sheer quality difference between a 4k digital movie and a 4k bluray is astounding. Hell, oftentimes a standard bluray looks better despite the lower resolution since it isn't being compressed
Theres no technical reason one should look better than the other.
Both should use multipass ahead of time compression with a rate control algorithm, and both should have enough slack streaming bandwidth to handle complex scenes with buffering
A 4K movie uncompressed would be something like two or three terabytes depending on the format. I think Arri are the only cinema cameras that can even shoot uncompressed or losslessly compressed, the rest shoot lossy compressed video in their native raw formats.
> since it isn't being compressed
Isn't being compressed as much. All Blurays are compressed either with MPEG2, VC1, H.264, or H.265 if it's an UHD Bluray.
Huh, I always thought they were uncompressed. That's why people preferred it over hd-dvd
Uncompressed 24-bit 1080p running at 24 FPS requires 1.192 Gbit/s, or 0.149 GByte/s. So a 25 GB (single-layer) blu-ray has enough space for a whopping 167.8 seconds of uncompressed 1080p video running at 24 FPS. You can double that with a dual-layer blu-ray, and there are more corners you can cut, but I don't think you'll fit your movie in there.
Video is really big. Compression was needed to make it even vaguely possible unless your quality was in the toilet.
HD-DVDs were smaller, so they were more compressed.
I don’t think that you guys should be debating compressed vs uncompressed, but lossy compression vs lossless compression. Your math seems to derive from a naive storage format.
Blu-ray is lossy too. All video codecs of note that aren't for professionals are lossy, so the point mostly still stands. Lossless compression doesn't go very far when it comes to video.
An uncompressed 24 bit 1080p image is just under 6 MB. If you save it as a compressed PNG, you cut that down to roughly 2.5 MB. Now, PNG compression isn't very efficient, and you can probably do some interframe magic if you really wanted to (cf lossless h264), but the whole exercise is mostly futile, since even if you cut your bitrate down to an eighth, you're still looking at, like, 20-ish minutes of runtime with 25 gigabytes.
Meanwhile, blu-ray looks as good as it does at an average of 25-30 mbit/s (0.03 gbit/s) (while UHD blu-ray even more so, with a better codec, so even more detail is preserved). The compression used saves so much space the trade-off is obviously worth it unless you're a production company making an actual movie, where every detail counts.
Ah, that's what it was. I'm still half asleep, I didn't drink enough caffeine this morning haha
Even a well-mastered DVD can look better than online streaming.
What's kind of an annoying side effect of this is that you have all this fancy new display tech, like quantum dot LED (marketing term, but w/e), or OLED, but it's all pointless because you're just watching it with crappy compression, negating the quality gains.
The football World Cup 2026 is being broadcast in 1080p with washed out colors. Yet every shop was advertising 4K OLED for the best experience of watching the matches.
> And the most relevant part is that you cannot transfer/sell a digital copy.
EU or any other gov can pass a law to allow that and we'll have the option.
Or they’ll just stop “selling” copies in those territories and only allow short-term rentals or monthly subscription services.
It's a weird trajectory to see because with the music industry people have started catching on and either support sites that offer more durable forms of ownership or have straight up reverted to physical ownership.
I remember joke “you will own nothing and will be happy”, it is less of a joke now.
It's from a 2016 essay. I'm not sure it was ever only a joke. I didn't even perceive it as a joke back then (unless you wanted to joke about companies being knobheads). It was already clear by then that that was the direction they wanted to go.
Adobe Creative Cloud became the only option for new Adobe software in 2013, 3 years before that essay. Sure, Adobe is on the forefront of being knobheads, but still.
> Sony's announcement follows Rockstar's announcement that Grand Theft Auto 6 will come with a download code in a box rather than a physical disc. It's a move that most notably stamps out second-hand reselling of a game.
This is the big point for me. If one buys a digital PlayStation game there's virtually no easy way to transfer it to another owner or sell it like one could do in past console generations. There will always be modding and ways to play game dumps, but it limits that level of "ownership" to those technically inclined to make it work.
> There will always be modding and ways to play game dumps
There won't because advances in defensive cybersecurity have made it so that software exploits are extremely rare (if they exist at all), and modern chips contain hardware defenses against electrical attacks like voltage glitching.
they weren't happy about people reselling their games for 5 dollars each, when they could charge 75 dollars to each of those people instead
Shutting down the stores on the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita, too.
https://blog.playstation.com/2026/07/01/an-update-on-playsta...
Discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48745476
Closing the online store for older systems simultaneously with announcing the dropping of physical media leaves an interesting question for the future. Even if you’ve never bought an online PS3 or Vita game, you’ll still be able to use the systems for physical games. Presumably once the PS6 store is gone, any console is just an ornament if you don’t have access to an account with games already purchased (and how long will the download servers stay up anyway? What is the foreseeable future?).
I was having this discussion with my 9 year old yesterday. He mentioned that a friend had Rocket League on their Switch 2 and "it didn't even need a game card". I told him that anything without a physical card can be taken away, the company that made it can decide to take it back or to stop letting it work. Compared that to my old DS which he found along with game cards for Lego Star Wars and Scribblenauts that still work ~20 years later.
I think he "got" it. He was certainly annoyed at the idea that something purchased could just be taken back. Maybe it'll stick and he'll be better able to understand why I'll push back on a new PlayStation or any digital only games.
Be aware that many (most) new games with physical disks can also be taken away (see Concord).
We must simply raise kids to understand the pitfalls of live service games and how they should never be trusted or given money.
Your point stands, but Rocket League specifically is free (this wasn't always true, but is now...)
The assumption is that it'll be jailbroken well before they shut down the store.
I'm not convinced, jailbreaks are becoming more difficult.
Given enough time, I'm sure it will happen, if only because they're not going to get security updates until the end of time.
And even if true, there's always emulation (also a pain though).
theoretically, the playstations are the most vulnerable since they run static versions of a FreeBSD derived system. the xbox doesn't really need to be jailbroken and the switch line is nearly impossible
> the switch line is nearly impossible
Werent early versions of the Switch 1 jail broken pretty fast and people were dumping switch 1 roms online to play in emulators?
I don’t follow this stuff too closely but I thought that I saw people playing the sequel to Breath of the Wild on PCs to get acceptable frame rates when it came out.
Shit, they tried a while ago with a lot of pushback. I hope they don't. I love my vita, and while realistically anybody playing one nowadays has it hacked and can get games from wherever they please, it sucks that the only official way is going the way of the dodo
This is why I will not be buying a PlayStation 6. I've had my Steam account for 20 years (21 come October) and I can still download every single thing I've ever bought there. Why should I invest in buying PS6 games when they're gonna be made obsolete by Sony?
If I am being a bit pedantic. Yes you can still download your old games, but they will likely be different from the original release. Grand Theft Auto games are known for dropping songs from the soundtrack due to licensing.
If you have Vice City on DVD and install it you can still enjoy Michael Jackson. Not with the Steam version.
You can still download games for PS3 and Vita after they stop selling them. It’s no different from how Steam no longer sells some titles it used to.
Sucks to see this right after the Studio Canal movie situation [1]. I won't be getting another PlayStation.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48691346
My thought as well. "Great" timing.
Why would anyone “buy” movies from PlayStation. That’s not their business, I would never have expected them to be in it for the long haul, just like MS did a rug pull on this a few years ago didn’t they?
Why not? Maybe people already have an account there with payment set up, the console hooked up to the TV and soundbar and don't want do sign up somewhere else?
Furthermore, Sony Pictures is huge, so selling movies is absolutely part of Sony's business as a whole.
It was their business, because they sold them....
Convenience? Maybe a belief the media would be accessible for a long time, versus the ever-changing catalog available from streaming services?
Consumers are lured into walled-gardens all the time - consoles, app stores, hardware. Where would you suggest someone purchase a digital license for a movie?
Apple has been selling movies for far longer haven’t they? Amazon is clearly invested in the space. Even Google.
From a video game store is the part I find odd. I get walled gardens. Not this one for this purpose.
Most games with retail copies drop in price soon after the hype window is over. They stay full launch retail price in the PSN store unless there is a "sale". Anti-consumerism at its finest.
I wonder if that's because there's a downward price pressure on physical inventory because it needs to get liquidated to free up physical space for new inventory.
That's certainly a factor, especially if demand was less than predicted, stores don't want to hold on to stock that's not selling, distributors and manufacturers don't want it returned. Better for everyone to reduce the price and sell the product.
I've reached an age where I don't actually buy games anymore, I just load up my wishlist with games and between Christmas, birthday and fathers day I get all the games I will care to play for the year. My wife, parents, extended family likes being able to buy me a physical gift, wrap it, and hand it to me. I understand that this is just getting rid of the disc and keeping the box, but pretty soon there's gonna be no box either, and I know my wife will hate the idea of just handing me a gift card on special days. I just hate how all physical products are evaporating.
I have a PS4pro; technically I also already own a PS5 (kid-brother arrangement; not currently in my possession). When he gets his PS6, I'll get my PS5 back... then still keep the PS4 (always been offline: RDR2; GTA5; &c).
If Sony doesn't offer GTA6 on disc, offline: I'll sell the PS5, too. I just got a 5070Ti, so it's probably back to PC-MasterRace I'll go...
Reasons like this [Sony's 2028 disc-stop] are exactly why I won't be purchasing a PS6. At least (in Sony's defense) they're telling us oldtimers about this now, as opposed to on the day of [stopping disc retail sales].
Rockstar has already announced there's no disk for GTA 6, if you buy a physical copy it's just a download code.
In contrast, Nintendo's idea to sell physical games that are essentially transferrable keys seems like a much smarter compromise.
Part of the appeal for the Switch and Switch 2 is the stability of their resale market. It's easier to pay for a new game when you know you can get 50% of your money back on the used market.
Sony wouldn’t see any benefit from switching to game key discs. Nintendo introduced them to save on manufacturing costs, but game key discs wouldn’t give Sony any additional market or reduce costs any; they’d only shrink the physical market further.
Guess I’m throwing my PS5 out the window and going to PC. This war on physical media is ridiculous. Pretty soon they’re going to require us to buy the console but rent the controllers for the very low price of $79.99 a month.
steam games don't have discs either
the real problem here isn't lack of plastic circles
On PC you can fight this by buying from GOG DRM-free digital storefront or the second more sinister option
Gog might consider linux more, which will make me reconsider it. I stopped buying from them because the lack of linux support
Can’t I back them to physical media?
Valve have shown themselves to be reasonably trustworthy unlike say, Sony and Microsoft. If there are no disks then there is no point in consoles in my view, they're just worse computers.
Steam only exists because Valve forced players to install it, force an online activation, and permanently bind their retail copies of Half-Life 2 to a Steam account. They also forced patching which meant in an era of dialup you couldn't play your single player game for hours, and needed to be connected every 30 days or your game would stop working.
None of the console manufacturers pulled that shit, that Valve gets a pass is wild to me.
plus, nothings stopping you from distributing a physical PC game. Heck, iirc steam still supports it. Even if it didn't, you could still buy a physical PC anyway since they can just have an exe, flatpak/snap/appimage, or dmg
Steam normalized the loss of resale rights on PC long before the consoles caught up. Younger people don't even realize it's a right that prior generations gave up.
and yet, Steam is seen as the superior service that deserves to keep their monopoly.
The thing with Steam is that it's more convenient than piratebay, but for the collector in you, piratebay is still there for insurance.
Not to mention whatever's available on GoG where you don't even need a crack to make backups.
With Sony you have no insurance.
Yes, and it's a tragedy that people have given up so much for the shallow convenience of having a shiny launcher and not having to figure out clicking on setup.exe.
Steam isn't a monopoly, it's just a good service. Why would I use a shittier one created by, generally, extremely greedy and woke corporations?
What do you mean woke corporations? How does that affect you?
By politicizing games, ruining them with their agenda, and in a hundred other ways.
You have to be very dense to think AAA video game devs have some woke agenda and not just knee-jerk reaction to market changes. There are plenty of games for you to goon to.
Steam has existed for an eternity compared to any console specific game store. It's not great that you can't resell what you have on Steam, but at least you get to 'keep' it.
To solve what exactly? Sure you will punish Sony but that won't bring optical media back. We need to accept and move on with the times.
It is still possible to actually buy PC games, not rent them.
I never understood why disc versions of current gent console exists at all. Don't @ me about internet speeds: even if game does come on a disc, day 1 patches got out of hand before this generation was launched or in works.
For me: resale value and being able to buy used games for cheap.
Exactly this. Today I can get a physical copy at release date for ~10 EUR cheaper than on the Playstation Store, then resell it for 3/4 of the price, or lend it to a friend easily.
Everything about digital-only is anti-consumer. Games will be more expensive with fewer and less important discount, the second-hand market will be dead, and so will be sharing games to friends so they can experience it for free.
Nintendo has implemented lending a digital game, but with arbitrary limits (you HAVE to be in physical proximity for the lending process, it lasts a maximum of two weeks, and you can lend 3 / borrow 1 game at a time). Sony and Microsoft don't let you do that.
One reason is control. You control the physical media. You can sell it, you can buy used games, let people borrow them, etc.
This affects less people, but there are also many who like collecting them. Physical objects are nice, especially if you've been keeping all your old games for old consoles.
Which also ties into control of course: you can still play your games, even if the companies that made them and the console no longer exist, buy old games from retro shops, buy new games for old consoles from new indie devs, etc.
> One reason is control. You control the physical media. You can sell it, you can buy used games, etc.
Unless that game ties to your account and disc becomes useless, or you game need a day 1 patch or day 412 patch or game is online or disc actually just a dummy that lets you download the game. Yes, the (in)convince of physical media totally worth it just so can sell what I got for $40/60/70 for $4 store credit at gamestop. All to have less control than I have from digital download from steam or GOG on PC.
Because Sony and all digital publishers with the exception of GOG are lying thieves. This is just another step in getting rid of ownership, and we are too naive and passive to stand up against it. Physical copies are a must to retain any sense of ownership over purchased games. If this is done, it must be forbidden to show "Purchase" on playstation store as that implies ownership,which it will never be. Also just look at the parallel issue that happened exactly these days with Sony deleting purchased movies from libraries. The same will happen with games. This is legalized theft.
I saw a photo of Destiny 2 for same at Walmart. First, game is Free-to-Play for years now, second version of a game that is on that disc cannot be played.
Tell me how does physical disc protect ownership? Then compare it to my digital downloads in steam where I can just copy game files between computers (if it's DRM-free)
> Also just look at the parallel issue that happened exactly these days with Sony deleting purchased movies from libraries. The same will happen with games.
I don't think Sony is much to blame here. They lost rights to distribute that content, so they can't distribute it. Blame copyright laws, not Sony.
If the console is diskless, it will be the last console I ever buy from that company. Sucks to say that about Sony but this is an incredibly out of touch move, that will always linger in the back of gamers minds that it could be tried again in the future if rolled back.
Disc consoles are superior in nearly every way:
- Disc consoles also have a hard drive, best of both worlds.
- You own the physical game. You don't own the digital version, just a license to it, which can be revoked, and deleted.
- You can trade games in 2 seconds.
- People can collect and play hundreds of games over the years on an moments notice, not waiting to download something. Games do try to compete to have the most of the players time, but it's not how all gamers play.
- Patches are normal for all games, and patches are usually smaller sizes than the entire game.
- Vintage is kind of popular now. None of those vintage systems, the original PS1/2/3/4 or Nintendos would be able to be experienced easily or at all if the physical media still didn't exist and survive. Digital platforms disappear when the system is EOL. Emulators can help, but it's a specialty and niche crowd. Handing a Nintendo to kids is something else.
> You own the physical game.
When it comes to consoles - you do not.
That will put them in direct competition with Steam, though. Suddenly their cheaper console will result in way higher cost for the lifetime of the console.
Killing the used market is a very bad idea. Remember what happened with xbox?
In a few years Sony executives will be wondering why a portion of their consumer base decided to prioritize other forms of entertainment. I can speak for myself in that I’ve never upgraded past the PS3, and I feel no regrets about it.
I personally see no reason to buy anything more than a PS4. I have a PS3 and it plays all the same kinds of games I'd want to play on a 4 or 5, with similar graphical fidelity. I have a 4, but only really have used it to play a remake of a game I can already play on the 3. I also have a vita which is used for indie games since that thing has nearly every indie game you'd ever want to play available (either officially or via homebrew)
At this point it’s a pretty small portion.
Last quarter 85% of all game sales were digital.
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/sony-just-reported-a-new-r...
They've also been pushing digital-only PS5s and PS5 Pro so there are fewer reasons to get a disk if you have no disk drive. They have created the problem that they are "solving."
Which you can explicitly buy a disk drive for, if that’s important to you:
https://direct.playstation.com/en-us/buy-accessories/disc-dr...
They actually did a good job giving the consumer choices - it’s just customers didn’t choose physical media.
PS4 is a great system, but I feel it may be my last Sony console. Steam Deck/Steam Machine will probably become the king of the household, as I don't see video games ever really leaving my life.
There is a tradeoff, the Steam Machine is double the price for worse performance and less storage.
The PS5 is great. We have a PS5 and PS5 Pro, both with disk drives (internal or external). But I really hate this policy. My brother comes over regularly to watch my pets, and he can simply bring a couple of his PS5 games over and play them rather than rebuying them and digitally downloading them. This breaks the in-person social aspect of gaming and game sharing that we've become accustomed to for decades.
Wow that doesn't sound great.
We won't own games anymore, we won't be able to sell/acquire used games, we won't be able to play disconnected.
I'm curious whether Nintendo will be following the same path.
We will own the games we purchase digitally if we change the laws to say that we own them. We've reached the point where politicians are talking about this issue, and I suppose support for copyright reform will only continue to grow.
TBH, 100% offline gaming has been problematic since day-one patches became the norm in the PS3 era. Sure, you might be play version 1.0 of the game from the disc, but often the experience was pretty compromised without the patch, often very buggy, or sometimes even features missing.
And the PS5 is meant to be able to play digitally downloaded while disconnected (at least the ones you own, not the PS+ games). It's just the implementation is little buggy, it sometimes breaks for some people and you get a bunch of vocal people complaining about how it doesn't work.
So IMO, you aren't losing much there. The digital-only experience isn't that different from needing to have internet to download a day-one patch.
It's the used game sales that are the biggest loss from this move.
>We won't own games anymore
Some of us do because we only buy from non-DRM encumbered platforms like GoG.
Don't buy games on steam, windows store, apple store, etc.
Stop giving companies money for something you don't own.
> I'm curious whether Nintendo will be following the same path.
Probably, they're already heavily invested in digital-only games, e.g. virtual console, or selling game boxes with just a download code.
But this goes back years already, physical copies of their games have remained expensive for ages. Relatively modern and/or very common "everyone has these" games like various pokemon games going for full price to 2-3x that.
Bye bye then. I love physical collection. If I buy it, it is my copy, not my provider's copy for rent.
Haven’t bought a physical game in at least 15 years (because of Steam). I do wonder how many people still buy physical copies these days.
Not sure what the sales are like on PS but at least on Steam you can find great deals for the digital copies as well. (You lose the reselling though)
Unlike Steam keys, there are no ways to distribute Playstation keys outside of Playstation platform. By removing retailers and second hand markets, what exactly would make Sony or any other publishers to continue offering any deep discounts on their products on a closed platform, especially when their biggest competitor Xbox has dropped the ball heavily.
I constantly rotate physical games for my PS5.
I'm in the UK, and CeX is a great shop to trade in a game for store credit once I'm finished with it, then pickup whatever I want to play next. Most of the time I can completely cover the cost of the next game with the credit received from the trade, or use some store credit leftover from a previous visit!
When a Sony studio Insomniac Games were hacked and a lot of internal documents were leaked, there were statistics for Sony's first party titles and their sales stats and what the split was between physical and digital sales[0] and for some of the titles, they sold mostly physical compared to digital. Apologies for poor quality, couldn't find a better image
[0] - https://imgur.com/lDhRmUh
Due to the steam sales and deep discounting its easy to buy games on steam for much cheaper then the consoles. For console where a game may be £60 for several years, buying physical means you can resell. For anyone with a budget, it makes a huge difference on how many games you can play.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is €59.99 on Steam and if you wait for a sale €14.99
For PS4 you can buy the disc version for €19.99 regular price and €17.99 on sale. Used discs start from €9.
If you don’t mind waiting for a sale then Steam is great. Otherwise PlayStation is a better deal.
I wonder if this signals anything about Sony's attitude to blu-ray movies. Aside from games one of the reasons their consoles have sold well is because they've been excellent physical media players. The PS2 for DVDs and the PS3 onwards for blu-ray.
If I remember well PS3 was during the period where blu-ray lasers were production constrained and more expensive with Sony prioritizing their own devices, so the console was price and availability competitive against dedicated disc players by third parties. And the PS3 had pretty long term update/support. I'm fairly sure that had an impact on the financial side as it was in the era when console hardware was subsidized on the expectation they'd get a slice of game sales, except those consoles bought for primarily for movies didn't reimburse them so well.
I’m not sure if Sony has been pushing their video disc formats with PlayStations for a while. PS4 Pro was the “4K” upgrade over PS4, but didn’t support UHD Blu-Ray. And there’s been a disc drive-less PS5 since launch.
Stuff like Blu-Ray seems to be becoming a Laserdisc like enthusiasts niche system, I don’t think it’s been a big thing for Sony for a while.
The PSN store does have sales often and digital games can be up to 90% off even AAA titles. This news has me wondering how the supply of used physical copies drives game prices lower. It's possible that eliminating physical releases gives Sony the pricing power to eliminate sales, or at least cut back from the huge sales they do currently.
just in time for Sony to sell you a digital game and delete it at their whim
This didn't age well : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA
Sony won a whole console generation on not being knobheads (as much as MS).
I really don't understand their thinking here. Sure they want more money, I get that.
But 'physical media' is one of the reasons why a lot o people make a distinction between PC and console games. Removing this will make it easier for consumers to compare a PS5 to a Steam machine, and I don't think that is a good thing for Sony.
Never been happier that I've turned into a retro-gamer. This is more the result of being old than a principled stance, but never the less. Increasingly I don't view myself as actually owning anything that connects to the internet. Minecraft is delightful on my disconnected Xbox-360, thanks. Nobody can break it by forcing an update or shutting down a server.
Wow. Looks like I'll be skipping the PS6 and exclusively gaming on PC.
This was bound to happen. I’ve long suspected the #1 reason physical games exist was to placate a few big retailers like Best Buy and Walmart and Target so they’d continue to carry the console.
Clearly that’s no longer necessary. Download-only retail boxes or gift cards or whatever are enough.
I know some people really care about physical releases, but I think the writing has been on the wall for years that this was coming.
The Sony that has just proved you can't trust them to maintain access to the digital content they "sold" you right?
<Unplugs PS5>
I have a PlayStation and I exclusively buy my games via discs. On the other hand, these days I exclusively buy computer games via digital download (mostly via Steam). I have more consumer confidence that digital games on my computer will remain accessible vs games on my console, maybe because Sony controls the entire console ecosystem.
Interesting timing to announce this at around the same time as the PS3 digital store is discontinued signaling that digital only doesn't last as long as physical.
My old Nintendo Wii is modified with homebrew software that keeps alive some otherwise inaccessible features since Nintendo shut off their servers. I hope the community can do similar for newer consoles when they reach the end of their life.
There are almost no new physical releases on PC, sadly. I’ve been collecting older games on CD and DVD.
One of the major reasons I upgraded to ps5 was because it would also allow me to play blu-ray movies.
If the PS6 comes out with no disc player at all, not a chance I buy it.
Also, that's a definite middle finger to second hand and physical stores then ? Hoping MS will make a bet in the opposite direction (but I don't see it) and the players will follow..
> middle finger to second hand and physical stores
They've seen the writing on the wall for at least a decade; that's why GameStop has more shelf space for Funko Pops than for games.
Genuine question but is this why Gamestop was thinking about buying E-bay which ironically had some of the most greatest meme about "half cash, half stock" if someone remembers that in terms of the immense stupidity displayed in botching up the deal or the finances of it.
but what is the plan for shops like GameStop then if nobody buys or sells games anymore via offline shops. as you mentioned with Funko pops (and I had to search up with that), but they could perhaps transition to merchandise focused goods but I think that even within that online could have a valid competition?
> but what is the plan for shops like GameStop then if nobody buys or sells games anymore via offline shops
Bankruptcy.
They've already had to massively cut down after the first round of people switching to digital-only. I doubt they'll survive a digital-only world (maybe a rebrand will work? Or maybe they'll limp along on merch).
Ironic that you mention MS because also ironically, around the PS4 launch there was a lot of brouhaha about MS not allowing transfering games, while for the PS4 launch video they showed how easy it is to transfer games (just hand over a disk).
I hate it. I hate digital only games. I get that the numbers and reality are against my wishes but that doesn't make it any better. I want to unpack my console from storage in 20 years and play the games I bought for it even if the company or servers no longer exist.
Since they're also shutting down the PS3 and Vita stores - https://blog.playstation.com/2026/07/01/an-update-on-playsta...
That means that when the PS8 rolls around, any games you've bought for the digital-only PS6 will be unplayable, so think about that when you buy digital games when that (and for PS5 now) comes through.
This sucks but I guess PC has been like this for a long time and no one seems to care/talk about it
This comes a week after Sony deleted 500+ movies from people that legally bought them
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/sony-removing-over-50...
Who's to say that the games you buy for the PS6 will be playable in a couple of years?
Well, I guess that answers the question of whether the PS6 will have an awkward snap on disc drive.
to be fair, the "awkward snap-on disc drive" on ps5 isn't really awkward -- it's a one time install and is now indistinguishable from a built-in drive.
Some libraries let you borrow Playstation video games. I wonder if those libraries will have access to a system that allows people to borrow digital video games.
Lol, no
Rip main stream physical game market.
Long live independent physical game market. We already see people with 3d printed carts, designing labels and making their own homebrew games for retro consoles. Some people are also producing their own big box PC games for the hell of it.
As I continue to largely ignore AAA & mainstream gaming companies I look forward to how the indie gaming market takes advantage of everyone's growing nostalgia for physical ownership of games.
Nearly all of the people who sell third party physical carts and media are also selling digital versions as well, which sell in much greater numbers.
The physicality is a novelty, much like vinyl records. It’s a market sure, but not a significant one that calls for a paradigm shift.
Sony just literally stole 500+ movies from PlayStations last week.
Imho this is no issue, as long as the game is playable after download without some kind of server or account.
The moment you need an account or server to play you don't own the game. I think governments should step in here. They must force stores to use words like rent or lease instead of buy. That way it is way more clear where you are going to spend money on.
How do you purchase or download a game without a server or account?
I think they mean to say that it is fine as long as you no longer need a server or account once it is downloaded from their server.
You would be allowed to keep a backup, play the backup, transfer the backup, etc.
purchase /= run
From a business perspective, I understand this. The physical games sections of most retailers are pitiful these days - take a walk down the PS5 aisle in Target or Best Buy for example. They also have a need to shore up margins if they want to keep subsidizing the hardware during the component crisis. And their biggest competitor, XBox, is in the process of pivoting out of their current pivot and apparently is about to layoff a massive chunk of its workforce.
But at the end of the day, part of what makes a console a console to me is the ability to swap games with friends. If I can't do that easily, why wouldn't I just use Steam?
https://www.doesitplay.org
I guess this resource is relevant to the topic at hand. It lists games and whether you can play and complete them fully from disc without an internet connection
I thought CDs were (mostly) no longer being produced. I'm surprised this decision was not made years ago.
They're Blu-Ray discs.
One huge downside for this is allowing kids to understand how things work.
A digital delivery world does not teach the same way as children learning to put a DVD into a player, hitting play, and understanding how things get somewhere.
Physical game disks, were also about community, gathering.
This is surprising because Sony obsessed over the isolation it was creating when it released the walkman.
> A digital delivery world does not teach the same way as children learning to put a DVD into a player, hitting play, and understanding how things get somewhere.
What did putting a disc in disc reader thought you?
> This is surprising because Sony obsessed over the isolation it was creating when it released the walkman.
And they have the only online storefront on PlayStation, therefore 2nd-hand market is gone. So what is surprising here?
Bummer! Based on the current trajectory, PS6 will be the first non-handheld PS I will not own.
And this is coming right after the news about how Sony will be deleting movies from people's accounts.
I will no longer buy playstations starting now
Starting 2029:
(Polish movie quote paraphrase btw.)what will happen when in 10 years they will want to discontinue those games? will they be hosting them forever? how are we going to preserve all the videogames production from 2028 on?
The unfortunate thing is that there actually already is a government mechanism for this, in the US at least, but it's been lobbied against by the industry [0]. So like, there already is a way to do this, the same way that libraries are allowed to preserve copies of every book, but the video game industry blocks it from happening.
[0] https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/u-s-copyright-office-...
If they are going digital only then they are competing with Steam. They will lose.
They aren't competing with Steam. The console market is a closed cabal where console makers sell the machine at a loss and make up for it with locked down software where publishers pay a significant proportion of the sales to the console maker, who controls supply and dealflow with private contracts.
They might lose, but it's nothing like PC.
We use M-disc for archival. Fuck Sony.
So physical disc production is ending for new games on Playstation.
At the same time, as @outervale has said: they are shutting down PS3 and PS Vita online stores as well.
AND at the same time as @zache has said & previous discussions about PlayStation Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts.
WHILE at the same time, Dynamic pricing[0] is occuring where people who buy games are charged more because PS expects them to be able to cough up more money from my understanding
Combining all of this: No physical disc + shutting down online stores + deleting movies from customers accounts + dynamic pricing.
These might basically just be planned obsolence devices while trying to extract as much profits as humanly possible from your wallets.
I remember the dynamic pricing debate and that some people were somewhat tolerable of that, but I think that being tolerable of that is what is causing more and more precedents and an overall situation has occur where things are just increasingly more actively consumer-hostile.
[0]: https://www.ign.com/articles/sony-reportedly-testing-dynamic...
So this pretty much confirms that GTA 6 won't be sold as disc later on
Oh man, I had forgotten about GTA 6 releasing on Playstation earlier than PC's. So all the hype around GTA 6 and the fact that people have been waiting for so long would drive up the demand of newer playstations and with all the 4 changes that I talked about in one of my other comments[0]
> No physical disc + shutting down online stores + deleting movies from customers accounts + dynamic pricing.
This basically becomes a sunk cost fallacy, both in buying the games or subscription models.
Because there are people who want a game so badly and want to play on release date and that game has partnered up with a console company that they will only release (first) on some consoles with the 4 factors discussed above. It leads to an incredible sunk-cost fallacy which somewhat capitalizes on the fact of the hype of the game and they are looking for any and every ways to capitalize on it for as long as possible.
I imagine some Playstation subscription yearly discount might also happen near the launch of GTA 6 so that they could tie users up to an yearly subscription perhaps.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48746439
AAA game industry is in such a state, that not justifying piracy becomes harder and harder with each day.
This is another opportunity for the EU to reign in and create a proper definition of ownership so that this does not pass.
Of course, it would be interesting to hear the freemarketeering on this site and how people should "vote with their wallet" and sites/movements such as $freeplaystation.whatever sprouting pseudopolemic nonsense.
Voting with wallet works, unless there is a cartel there. Which probably is. Similar as with Samsung's RAM
I can't wait to see the impact this will have on game prices due to the monopoly Sony is creating on selling PlayStation games.
Thanks for the fish but enshittification is only getting started.
Now Sony can take away your entire game collection at any time. If you get flagged by some random AI system and your account gets flagged you can kiss goodbye to hundreds of dollars worth of games you have.
Last step is for them to say that due to rising components' cost, they are transitioning to rent-only model for consoles.
This way you will finally own nothing except for maybe console rent arrears.
Didn't Sony get in trouble for deleting movies from devices ? I guess they want to do the same for their console too.
So people should just stop buying games that are not on phyical media. THat will get Sony to change fast.
This is ridiculous, and not long after they've been updating their ToS to require you to sign in and phone home in order to continue to be allowed access to your digital library.
> In response to shifting trends in consumer preference.
I hate this corporate speak. If buying isn't ownership, then pirating isn't stealing.
It’s not corporate speak - they have hard data in digital vs physical sales that they report on every quarter:
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/sony-just-reported-a-new-r...
Even more reason to call this out, they know the exact figures they need to create physical copies of, they're claiming a complete trend to reduce their expenses. I don't believe they have some agenda to simply turn off games for people for no reason, but needing to check in every few months to keep a game active is actively hostile to the customer.
> If buying isn't ownership, then pirating isn't stealing.
You're not buying a game, you're buying a license to play the game. If you don't agree with the terms, don't buy that license, but that doesn't mean you're entitled to commit copyright infringement.
If I buy a movie ticket, that means I get to watch the movie once. That's the agreement.
There's an expectation that once the sale is finalised they should t be able to just take it back when they like. Agreements or not that's not how things are supposed to work.
> If I buy a movie ticket, that means I get to watch the movie once. That's the agreement.
Good thing I don't recognise copyright. Can't infringe on that which does not exist. I'm sick of pretending it does good in the world when I constantly see its consequences are things like this.
> If I buy a movie ticket, that means I get to watch the movie once. That's the agreement.
Given the amount of agreements out there that have unfair terms from the get go, or are otherwise Darth Vadered, why should anyone care what deal the corps give you?
If you don't like the deal, don't take it. It doesn't matter if you recognize copyright, it's the law. Some people don't recognize speed limits; that doesn't always end well for them.
> it's the law
I can ignore that too, you know. Not all laws are reasonable.
> Some people don't recognize speed limits; that doesn't always end well for them.
Breaking the speed limit can be lethal. That's a pretty good reason to follow that rule even if you don't care who made it.
I haven't found good reasons to keep copyright law (on the contrary, I constantly see it hinder progress in society), so I ignore it.
If I get prosecuted for doing copyright infringement, I'll take it with pride.
I don't buy every game on a physical disc—I don't see the point for live service games, for example—but I do have a fairly large collection of physical PS5 games because I like that assurance that I can continue to play that game forever. I guess what we see here is that after 2028 I have no reason to own a PlayStation ever again.
Aaaand I'm not going to buy a PS6.
On pc there is some competition at least between Steam, epic, gog (the odd one out but I like it) and such. I have no interest in buying a vendor specific computer with only one storefront and no competition.
But those are still digital-only platforms, with a chance of them disappearing. Epic is the biggest risk there, I think.
GoG is an interesting case though, it has loads of games that by and large were available on physical media, but because said physical media is either gone, broken, or in the hands of collectors, getting a physical copy of those games is difficult now. Them being a digital platform re-enables people to play these games.
GoG is also DRM free, so if GoG dies it's not like you'll lose access to your games. Even if you lose the files, archives will exist. Plus, if you're really that morally opposed to file sharing, you can always put it on a NAS or flash drive. Heck, put it on a bluray if you want to
It's important to note that that vendor specific computer is 1) cheaper then a PC that can play equivalent games, and 2) much more reliable (i never have to mess with drivers, updates just work, etc...)
>cheaper then a PC that can play equivalent games
There are no savings to be had. What you don't pay one way you pay another.
>much more reliable (i never have to mess with drivers, updates just work, etc...)
So do you not own a computer? How do you avoid dealing with those issues, otherwise?
I own several computers, and I use them for work. Running games on them means either running windows or running an emulation layer, and both solutions are unreliable messes. High end graphics cards are generally very expensive and have required binary-blobs that are really hard to troubleshoot, and (in my experience) always have problems.
If I want to play a video game, I turn on my PlayStation and it just works and I don't have to think about it or troubleshoot anything. This has not been my experience with PC gaming.
I exclusively play on Fedora if on pc and the only problem I had up to now was with the ps5 controller and some weird rumble input. That was easily fixed with some googling.
Sidenote but why do you use a PS5 controller? I can understand if someone already has a console they'd prefer to use the controllers they already have, but I see so many PC gamers go out and buy a playstation or xbox controller when they want a controller when 8bitdo is right there and much better for the price
Not everyone wants to do research for every little purchase. XBox and PS controllers are likely to be at least good enough, if not the baseline of quality. A few weeks ago I got an XBox-compatible third party controller with Hall effect sticks, and while it's mostly alright, I found a weird issue where when I enter a specific mode in one game by holding the right trigger I have to have the stick centered or it doesn't register for about a second. This doesn't happen with MS's controller, and I have no idea how the input device can be causing something so specific.
Do people genuinely not know about 8bitdo though? It doesn't take a lot of research if you're in a store or recommended it by amazon
Because I also own a ps5
See that's a great example. By the time I sit down to play a game, I don't want to be googling issues.
> As consumer preferences and the broader entertainment industry continue to shift away from physical discs to digital
_Goddamn citation needed!_
"You'll own nothing, and you'll be happy."
Unsurprising. [0] This is even before 2030 and you will own nothing and be happy.
Get ready for your games to be delisted [1] as you never owned them in the first place (unless you have the disc)
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33362792
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32049626
> unless you have the disc
Is that really enough? AFAIK many PC games with SecuROM won't ever work without crack, as that entire DRM is incompatible with modern OSes.
It's enough on consoles.
On PC, discs (when they even exist, which is rare) have basically just been digital keys for a long time.
There is a simply countermeasure.
Don’t buy their consoles and games
Step by step...
I used to think this was bad, but honestly? It’s just games. Some people buy tons of digital games they literally never even play. If they were physical games, imagine all the e-waste.
And what’s the point of physical games? So you can play the game in 30 years from now on some retro console you’ve diligently maintained?
Get over it, you’re not going to do any of that. There’s no mythical third act where you go through some library of physical CDs and reminisce about an old ass game. There’s constantly new games coming out all the time, you will just keep buying and buying games, you play them for a bit, and then you move on. It’s not “buy it for life”, it’s buy it for right now have fun and move on. Live in the present, don’t worry about the future.
Even people who have retro consoles and collect physical copies seem to mostly do it for collector purposes. When they die, their kids will send all that to a dump or pawn it off. Pointless.
I agree with most of this, which is why emulation is generally better unless you specifically want to operate/show off a museum.
Maybe things will be like the Nintendo BS-X where people will reverse engineer consoles with games downloaded to extract the game from it.
That being said I do have a physical Atari 2600 with a few games. Astroblast with paddles is still a fun game today, and Video Olympics (the Atari VCS version of Pong) is extremely fun to bring out at parties.
the Atari 2600 is probably my favorite console to collect for. The games cost next to nothing and old games like that are fun to just grab a stack of and play each game for 5-10 minutes each
Replace 'games' with 'books' in your comment. Would you feel the same way?
No because shelves full of books make great decorations and sound proofing in between walls.
>There’s no mythical third act where you go through some library of physical CDs and reminisce about an old ass game.
Huh? You won't replay every game, sure, but once in a while you'll find a game that you keep coming back to even many years after first playing it. The last time I played Pokémon Red all the way through was only a few years ago. I have permanent Deus Ex, Crysis, FEAR, and Duke Nukem 3D installations on my hard drive, so I can run them for a bit whenever I feel like. Maybe once you put down a game you never pick it again, but don't assume what is true of you is true of everybody.
Maybe remember the experience but grow up?
Do you mean "grow up", or do you mean "stop enjoying things you used to enjoy"?
If you enjoyed something as a much younger person, and enjoy it as a much older person, it is very unlikely that it is the thing itself that you are enjoying. To test it, you can try giving that thing to someone your age and see if they enjoy it (they will most likely think it's a nuisance). To experience it yourself, you can try what kids are into these days or even better try something that people used to like long before you were born, in which case you will very likely see these things as pointless quite quickly. If you observe these things, it is easy to see that nostalgia is enjoyable because it is about associating your youth and naiveté with the object of nostalgia. If you grew up, you would see that it is just some distraction that merchants brought to you to profit from your stupidity. If you realize this, you'll enjoy not having to deal with that shit a lot more.
>To experience it yourself, you can try what kids are into these days
What do you mean? I'll try anything if I think it will appeal to me, but I don't know any children to ask what they're into to conduct this experiment.
>or even better try something that people used to like long before you were born, in which case you will very likely see these things as pointless quite quickly.
Like how long? I like classical music. I don't really like theater. I read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and liked it; I read Martín Fierro and hated it. What conclusion do we draw from all this?
>If you observe these things, it is easy to see that nostalgia is enjoyable because it is about associating your youth and naiveté with the object of nostalgia.
No, I don't agree. I don't agree that I derive nostalgic enjoyment from the examples I gave previously. I think that I can enjoy them because they're familiar things that I can engage with as a matter of routine. I can enjoy them for the same reason I biked to work through the same route for over ten years straight without getting bored. Someone completely new cannot derive that same routinary enjoyment. For example, DOOM is basically just as old as Duke Nukem 3D, but I only played it many years later, and so I never finished it (but I also don't think I would have liked it as much back in the day; the gameplay is just not as good. I should try other Build games to see how they compare). As another example, I should definitely feel nostalgia for Saint Seiya, but I tried multiple times just couldn't get through it. It's just for children, an adult can't miss the obvious plot holes. But I saw The Lion King in the theater and then dozens of times on VHS, and then dozens more times off my NAS 20+ years later, and loved it every time -- as an adult I just could better understand why it was so good.
>If you grew up
You're asking to be told off.
>you would see that it is just some distraction that merchants brought to you to profit from your stupidity. If you realize this, you'll enjoy not having to deal with that shit a lot more.
I don't "deal with" the things I like. I like them. Engaging with them is not something I'm forced to do that I have to cope with. Are you an alien? What do you do for fun? Stack rocks on the beach? Or is fun a foreign concept to you?
I'm not even understanding the topic of discussion. Nostalgia bad?
Your enjoyment isn’t pure in the sense you genuinely enjoy the thing for what it is.
You enjoy it mostly because you’ve enjoyed it once before.
Regardless, it is not even an argument for physical media, you don’t even have physical copies of these old games, and even if you did, holding the physical copy wouldn’t add anything to your experience besides a bit of novelty.
Physical discs should be obsolete.