Just days after Grand Theft A 6 pre-orders opened with purely digital versions and code-in-a-box releases, last week PlayStation rocked the gaming world by announcing it is ending all releases of new PlayStation games on physical discs from January 2028.
As Techradar reports, the news came just days after Sony deleted select films from users’ accounts that were bought digitally, and offered no compensation.
In a PS blog post, the gaming giant stated that the move is “a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs.” Claiming that the move “will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today,” Sony looks to be reflecting recent statistics which show the vast majority of game purchases are indeed digital.
It’s a far cry from Sony’s famous dunk on the PS4’s competitor, the Xbox One, at the beginning of the last console generation, when the latter appeared to be announced with a function that would block resale and sharing of physical games. Microsoft quickly rowed that back.
The under-30-second video clip published by PlayStation has been viewed millions of times and is part of a series of famous ‘wins’ for PlayStation’s console over Microsoft’s back in 2013 that set the scene for that generation — and beyond — and is part of gaming folklore.
Now, however, it’s all changed.
The move has not gone down well with fans, gamers, and the wider industry, as it likely paves the way for an all-digital future, and possibly a critical, maybe terminal blow to the second-hand game market, the ability to share games with others, and from a game preservation perspective.
It also means that the PS6 will likely be all-digital by default — perhaps with an optional disc drive — and won’t release until 2028 at the earliest. With rumors that Xbox could follow suit with its next-generation console, the future looks increasingly digital, and game collectors such as ourselves are deeply worried and sad about it.
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