This morning, Sony announced that physical PlayStation game discs will cease production in 2028 and, well… I'm not surprised, I'm just disappointed. I've been a physical game collector for years, but the writing's been on the wall pretty much since the start of the PS4 generation. The advantages of digital distribution are too numerous to count – if you're a game publisher. But for those of us out here actually buying and playing games, the consequences are vast and severe even for players who prefer the digital format.
The existence of digital distribution has been a net positive for gaming, since it's allowed small and mid-sized developers to create games and sell them to a wide audience they never would've been able to reach before. Without digital game sales, the likes of Stardew Valley, Hades, and Terraria simply would not exist. But while I'm happy to support indie developers by buying their digital games, if I'm faced with a choice between paying $70 (or, at this point, $80) for a physical game or a digital one, I'm going for the physical option every time.
Preserving the past
Despite the fact that some (not all, not even most, but some) discs are essentially unlock keys that contain very little game data, they are still physical objects that hold value in the real world. I can lend these discs to friends, or sell them on eBay, or use them to revisit favorite old titles instead of rebuying the latest remaster – all things that, presumably, publishers like Sony would prefer us not to do.
The vast majority of current game discs, which do contain fully playable game installs, are essential to ensuring the games of today remain available in the future. Sony is proving this true even now as it promises (for real this time) to shut down the PS3 and Vita stores. The same thing has already happened with Wii, Wii U, 3DS, and Xbox 360 online stores, and while users admirably still have the ability to redownload purchased games on those platforms, if you want to go back and play a digital-only release you might have missed out on in that era, your only option is piracy.
The secondhand NES that I got as a kid in the '90s still works, albeit with a bit of repair work. The same goes for all of my old games, with many hundreds of other titles still available to buy secondhand. When I spent $700 on a PS5 Pro, my expectation was that it, too, would continue to work for another 30 or 40 years, and that I'd be able to play its library of thousands of games whenever I got around to them. But what good is the promise of that investment when the PS6 comes around and every single game I purchase is tied to a server that Sony could choose to shut down at any time?
Protecting the future
With the end of physical games, PlayStation now controls its entire ecosystem, just as the company once ridiculed Xbox for trying to do in 2013. The company can now ensure it gets a cut of every single game sold on its platforms, with no threat of players spending their money on cheaper used titles. And without a genuine market for new and used retail games to determine what people actually want to pay, we're about to enter a new Wild West for pricing.
This future is all the more concerning given the "dynamic" pricing that Sony is already experimenting with on the PlayStation Store. With a retail game, everyone sees the same, clearly marked retail price. In an all-digital ecosystem, that clarity is gone, replaced by an individual price for each user, with little clarity about who's getting which price and why.
This threat is not purely theoretical. It's called surveillance pricing, where online retailers use your personal data to set prices according to whatever they think you're willing to pay. In most cases, competing retailers carry similar products so that if, say, Instacart decides to gouge you on grocery prices, you can at least use a different service or head to a local store.
PC games have, of course, effectively been digital only for years without running these sorts of scams, but PC is an open platform. If Steam were to suddenly take a dramatic turn for the worse, alternatives like GOG, Humble, or even the dreaded Epic Games Store could start to pick up the slack. Sites like IsThereAnyDeal already keep PC stores honest with comparative pricing history going back years.
But as of January 2028, the PlayStation Store will be the only place you can buy new PlayStation games, barring whatever mysterious format these now discless games show up at retail in. I've got my fingers crossed that Sony decides not to, you know, be evil, but my willingness to trust corporate altruism is pretty low these days. The end of physical discs benefits no one but Sony and, perhaps, the increasingly small handful of AAA publishers.
Get these upcoming PS5 games on discs while you still can.
