Over at The Clutter Reports I’ve defended physical media even during the declutter process. There are good reasons to own your own copy of something, but the entertainment industry has fought that since the debut of the VCR and the home video market. Now the gaming companies are pushing for the same thing. Sony dropped quite a bombshell to open the month of July, with this announcement from their official blog by Senior Director of Content Communications for Sony Entertainment:
As consumer preferences and the broader entertainment industry continue to shift away from physical discs to digital, physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting January 2028. Following this date, new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only. This transition has no impact on games that already released, or will be releasing, prior to January 2028 in disc format.
This is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs. This transition will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today.
We’ll continue to prioritize our resources to drive innovation in how players can access games and provide choices as to where players prefer to purchase new games, whether that’s at retailers or PlayStation Store. We remain committed to delivering a world-class gaming experience to our fans and we thank you for your continued support.
Whether you play video games on the PlayStation or not, this might affect you. Cord Cutters News is wondering how this will affect home video of shows and movies produced by Sony, and whether that will shift to completely streaming. That means any new content from them or a chance to own a copy of older content might go with the games.
The broader question now emerging is whether DVDs and Blu-rays themselves could face similar pressure next. Sony has already implemented major reductions in its recordable optical media operations. Production of blank recordable Blu-ray discs, along with related formats such as MiniDiscs and MiniDV cassettes, ended in early 2025 following earlier workforce adjustments in the company’s optical media division. These cuts reflected declining demand for consumer recording media as streaming and digital storage options expanded.
So whether you’re a gamer or movie collector this discussion is rather important.
I didn’t even get into Nintendo doing similar stuff with the Switch2.
First off, why do this? Well, in the announcement, Sony claimed that this was the direction the market was heading, that everyone were getting their games off of the internet, and yet there’s still a strong preference to physical media. You don’t need to be online to load the game, which if you live in an area with limited internet or are camping with an RV or some other way to charge a laptop is a good thing. It also means you can trade or sell a game to friends or a store like GameStop in order to get more games or just open space on your computer and shelf to make room for other games or just other stuff. It’s a way to get your money back if you decide you don’t want to play that game anymore.
Game studios have tried to increase their games’ shelf life with downloadable content (DLC) featuring bonus levels, new play features, and patches to fix stuff they didn’t catch while testing (though in some studios cases they leaned too much on that to make a deadline rather than ensure a polished product). PlayStation had memory cards to store those, and other consoles followed suit while PCs (and the occasional Mac, which isn’t a bit go-to for gaming) already have storage options. The problem is they get your money once and that’s it. This isn’t like the old days where you had to go to a physical arcade and put money in every time you wanted to play, though I don’t know if companies got any money from that unless they rented cabinets to the arcades. There wasn’t the same complaints about home games like there was for home video. It just changed the gaming experience because you didn’t level up for the same reasons.
If Cord Cutters News is valid in their fears, and this announcement only covers the PlayStation, it means losing another avenue to own a copy of a favorite movie, or box set of a favorite series. They also reported a few days ago that PlayStation dropped a bunch of movies from their video service, including ones people “paid” for. Meaning it was more a high priced rental with the only due date being the end of a licence than actual ownership of a copy of the film. That’s an issue with streaming, whether you’re paying for it or advertising is. You still lose it if the licence goes away or you part company with that service. When it live streams or airs on TV the station pays the movie studio and distributor and hopes to make it up in ad revenue and viewer counts if not subscriptions to ensure that channel can be watched. Outside of rereleasing them in theaters that’s the only way the revenue stream keeps going because the home video you only buy once, though seeing them follow what video games are doing, by eliminating home video entirely so that you can only see it by giving them more money to rent a movie without permanent ownership, is highly likely. It’s the only time Hollywood will cheer on the video game industry that to them is competition for your money.
There’s also the whole Stop Killing Games movement. As they fight to preserve older games no longer having DRM servers that are required to operate the game even when it has offline play, or the companies fighting fans creating their own servers for MMO and other online player vs player games, nostalgia is dying and people who thought they were buying a game they could play so long as they have the hardware or emulator to run it are finding out they own nothing. Gamers are not happy about it and cinephiles are about to share that experience. Hollywood has fought against home video since its inception. In both cases the goal is to get money every time someone watches a movie or plays a game. It also comes after other bad news for fans of retrogaming and backward compatibility in the official consoles.
Sony’s announcement comes as the company also revealed plans to sunset support for older PlayStation storefronts.
Earlier today, Sony confirmed that the PlayStation Store for PS3 and PS Vita will ultimately close globally in 2027, leaving many players questioning how digital preservation will work in the decades ahead.
The next Pac-Man, Mario, or Sonic is unlikely to appear with what Sony and other gaming companies have planned.
We already see the future with Grand Theft Auto 6, the latest game coming from Rockstar’s franchise. Instead of a physical disk, if you go to buy a box from a store you just get a download code in the box. While that keeps your credit card info off of a downloading site, it still means going the extra step of driving to the store is useless. This actually goes against the defense by some that this means reduced trash from jewel cases and physical disks since you still have the package to throw out. Having a box on your shelf is a sort of trophy for collectors. For others it’s just clutter. If it just holds a flat card with a code that could be useless when Rockstar wants to push you towards Grand Theft Auto 7 down the line and you can’t download the game from them anymore, what’s the point? Again, that’s what the Stop Killing Games movement and group is about, and they already lost a recent battle with the California government, the home of many game studios who want to force you to only play the next game and give them more money.
This isn’t about saving the environment or players’ preferred experience. It’s about greed, about making sure they get your money but still get to push you to the next game they put out by making an old one unplayable. It’s an attack on gaming preservation and nostalgia, because they don’t care about the experience. They care about making your money into their money and they’ll force or trick you into giving it to them. Nintendo doesn’t even want you playing their games online. This is odd because if you want people to play Grand Theft Auto 7 down the road and they can’t play Grand Theft Auto 1-5 to compare the experience to (or some game franchise that unlike GTA and Final Fantasy has sequels whose stories play back to earlier games) then what’s the point of even having a sequel? It’s the killing of a brand because Grand Theft Auto as a Brand won’t matter a few games and generations down the road, not even the next one in line to play M rated games. So even young gamers today won’t care and your brand will die.
Greed make corporations stupid and that’s what we’re seeing here. Some big name and popular studios have gone out of business or been torn apart due to corporational greedy stupidity. That’s the goal here, so they’ll kill themselves and the smaller and indie game spheres will be there to pick up the pieces when they die, but will that benefit the industry? Comics are dying to do similar stupidity. Audio dramas and audiobooks are rarely discussed anymore. They might never die but they’re losing their spot in the culture, which Hollywood would be thrilled to see their competition die. None of this is to the benefit of the media, and it’s the very audience their courting it hurts overall. In an effort to make all the money they’re going to end up losing good money long-term and more and more nobody is going to morn them when their gone, but they will morn the games that could have been and the ones that they’re about to lose forever. So much for greed working.
JUST IN: Apparently XBox is looking at a similar standard, plus giving gamers the ability to turn their old physical games into digital games. Or so goes the rumor. Would we be surprised?
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