Disgaea series creator and former president of Nippon Ichi Software, Sohei Niikawa, has spoken out against Sony's decision to kill discs for new PlayStation games from 2028, saying the company "may as well go all the way" and "eliminate the hardware too."
Sony's controversial announcement earlier this month has sparked outrage across the games industry, with everyone from players to devs raising concerns about the future of physical media, game preservation, ownership, and more. I'm honestly struggling to think of a single person I've seen in favor of the decision, and Niikawa certainly isn't one of them.
In an interview with Noisy Pixel at Anime Expo 2026, Niikawa explains that he thinks "physical editions of games are very important." For a start, he begins, there's the collectible aspect: "For fans, being able to keep a game they love as an object can have a great deal of value. It becomes a memory or a keepsake connected to something that matters to them," he says.
That point is clearly fresh on his mind given his attendance at Anime Expo. "They can also bring that physical game to an event like this and ask someone to sign it," he continues. "Afterward, they can take it home, display it, and decorate their room with it. Physical games are important because they can carry that kind of meaning."
Niikawa notes that he can understand Sony's decision "from a purely business perspective," but thinks that "the executives who decided it have probably never experienced" a fan approaching them to sign a physical game at an event. He adds: "I don't think they understand the feelings of those fans, and they may never have considered what physical editions mean to the people who value them."
As for the future of physical games, Niikawa sounds almost defeated as he suggests that, without physical games, there's little point in having consoles in the first place. "If they're going to go as far as eliminating physical packages, they may as well eliminate the hardware too," he says. "A television would be enough. Why would you need the console? If you're going to get rid of physical games, you may as well go all the way."
It's fair to say that with the likes of cloud gaming, there's a genuine possibility of that being the case going forward. Xbox may have shoved its odd "this is an Xbox" marketing under the rug, but Game Pass Ultimate's cloud functionality really can let a lot of devices function like a console, albeit with limitations like the constant internet connection requirement and smaller choice of games. Sony is delving more into cloud gaming now, too – following an update last year, you no longer need to own a PS5 in order to use the PlayStation Portal.
Is this a future people would actually want, though? I suspect not – the backlash over the disc situation has been bad enough. Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima previously said that the concept of a digital-only future where media can suddenly become inaccessible is "frightening."
