The transition to digital has been a slow burn for a decade, but Sony just set an eviction notice for physical media.
The internet nearly exploded when what seems like the inevitable finally happened, Sony announced they are getting rid of discs. The ability to own more than a digital licensed rental is coming to an end as fans shift mostly to digital sales. But obviously we have some thoughts about it, and some worries too.
Jordan – Sony Can’t Get Out of Their Own Way
This is stupid. My initial reaction when the news first hit was shock and anger, yet the more I’ve thought on it, the more pissed I get. Yes, we’ve seen a number of sites and influencers use the “this was always coming” line of reasoning, but that really doesn’t make it any less shitty. Nor does it necessarily mean it’s a good idea for the company overall.
Sony has a solid history of shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to gaming stuff. They can’t seem to help themselves (and I say this as a gamer whose primary console has almost always been PlayStation). Worse, even when faced with evidence of a thing not working, they tend to double down. Just look at live-service/games as a service models. That was the next big thing, yet we’ve seen several titles be shut down just months, sometimes WEEKS, after launching. That’s another topic I could expound on, but the writing has been on the wall for a while now, yet Sony envisions a future where it’s the main way to get people playing.
Much of this decision making, even with the discs, boils down to this concept. They don’t actually want gamers to own their games. They want EVERYTHING to be subscription based, that way players have to funnel money in on a regular basis, rather than buy something once and be done.
This push to digital only helps that mentality. They’ve long been encouraging gamers to buy digitally (despite offering no real incentives for it) over physical. They launched fewer PS5’s with a disc drive than the all-digital ones, then the PS5 Pro eschewed it entirely. Sure, there’s the disc-drive accessory, but in a hobby that’s increasingly pushing people away because it’s cost prohibitive…that’s not much of a choice.
With this announcement about getting rid of discs, they’ve given up even the illusion of offering gamers a choice. And that’s not to mention the inherent argument about whether a person even OWNS their digital media. That the reveal came just a couple days after telling people over 500 movies they’d bought digitally were no longer accessible feels like the biggest red flag.
If they can do it with movies, they can absolutely do it with games. Hell, the first Scott Pilgrim game was unplayabled for nearly a decade because it was only released digitally. So unless you had an old PS3 where it was still downloaded….you were out of luck.
Combine that with the fact they also announced the PS3 and PS Vita digital storefronts will be closing next year and it’s very obvious that Sony wants full control over your catalog of games. An ecosystem where you can only buy a game digitally from them, and apparently only when they allow you to, doesn’t feel sustainable. It’s very shareholder friendly, but leaves gamers in the dust.
Becky – It’s the End of the World as We Know It…
I’m still stunned that this is happening. I’ve known for years that things were slowly trending in favor of digital games, but in my wildest nightmares I never dreamed that anyone, let alone SONY, would actually pull the trigger and nix physical game discs entirely.
The words barely exist to describe how terrible of an idea this is. The only reason I was able to get into video games at all is because I was able to buy games secondhand or, more rarely, get some deals at a Black Friday sale. If physical game discs go away, so will the secondhand market for new titles. Sure, there will be a market for older titles, but access to an entire generation of games will be lost for a lot of gamers and who knows how many potential gamers will never make the leap?
I admit, I didn’t want to believe that Sony was setting up a world where access to digital games could be revoked on a whim. But seeing how movies and TV shows were taken out of digital libraries, I have to believe that yes, they will absolutely do the same thing with games given the opportunity. I don’t know about you, but I would be way more leery about purchasing any game if I knew there was no physical option that could be secured.
I also feel like this is going to severely damage consoles in general in the long run. If Sony (and Xbox if the rumors are to be believed) go through with this and eliminate physical game discs entirely, what’s really separating those devices from gaming PCs apart from general design? I suspect PC gaming is going to see a BIG influx of gamers in the next few years if Sony doesn’t backtrack on this insanely stupid decision.
Call me naive if you will, but it also hurts that the video game companies clearly aren’t listening to what we, the gamers, want. All they care about is squeezing out every last dollar of profit. Well, my last question is, what will Sony do when fed up gamers invest their money in gaming PCs instead? As the saying goes “You (Sony) need us (the gamers) more than we need you.”
Dustin – Sony Has Been Clueless This Whole Generation
When you see small developers reaching out that the decision is beyond them, but it’s also negatively impacting them, you have to question the corporate overlord. These devs are stating “a majority of our sales are physical,” and saying the future doesn’t look safe. Physical sales are still there. They might not be as strong as 2012, or 2019, or whatever, but they are still there. This is especially true for older games, or retro games, that people simply want to collect. A lot of smaller publishers like to put together physical packages which make collectors go wild, even if it’s through limited releases. Then you have companies like GameFly, GameStop, etc… that not only sell your games, but advertise your games and buy games in bulk. Heck the only reason I bought over half my games this gen is because I got to try them first on GameFly. You have companies like Limited Run that purely exist because people buy physical games….
People that want DVD’s, Vinyls, Blu-ray movies, can still find them even though the market is much smaller….
In fact the market conditions contradict what Sony says. If you take digital orders as a whole, sure they swing heavily in that favor. But you’re taking into account DLC, free to play games, live service games, games that don’t necessarily make sense for a physical collector. However if you step into the target audience of Sony, which is single player story driven games, or family based games, the numbers totally flip. Numbers go from 80 percent digital to 55-65 percent physical. Astro Bot was Sony’s biggest success this generation, and numbers show it sold through 60 percent physically.
And take it even further with Sony’s collectors editions. You could say collectors editions have gone downhill big time since PS4, but they still sold rather well. Then Sony made the idiotic decision to remove discs from them and only give digital codes in a steelbook case, and guess what? Nobody bought them. But instead of taking the hint, Sony decided numbers showed people don’t want collectors editions and now we don’t get one for Wolverine.
Sony made physical models of PS5 a premium, they still sold better than digital editions. To a point Sony had to limit physical editions and push the digital version harder just to get people to accept it. It is easy to find a digital edition of PS5, but finding a physical edition is a pain. Then they tacked on an additional purchase to get a disc drive for their premium Pro model, and yet the disc drive was hard to find because it was always sold out. (At the time of writing this, Sony’s own website still says the disc drive is “in high demand)” So either Sony intentionally made it hard to be physical, or the demand is, ahem, higher than their numbers show.
But hey, we all paid a premium for physical discs in multiple ways and Sony decided we don’t matter.
Sony knowing their target audience has been a lost art this whole generation. The same company that blew up their internal studios for a live service push, the same company that blew their bank account on Bungie, the same company that has released only 6 exclusive games on their own console this generation, suddenly wants to follow a general market trend because it’s been working out sooooo well for them….. Listen to your customers for once.
And people defending it are starting to slip too. “Maybe we will be able to sell digital games now!” No, no you won’t. If anything, prices of games are going to shoot up to 90-100 dollars because they have no guaranteed shipment to retail anymore. The only one benefiting from this is the corporations that can now freely remove games from your library, can place hybrid pricing models on their stores, and cut out the middlemen. “But that won’t happen to us!” Sure thing bud, wait till a major publisher believes they no longer need PlayStation.
