A few weeks ago, Sony announced that it would phase out physical disc production for PlayStation games.
From the start of 2028, all games are set to be digital-only, available either as part of the library of content included across PlayStation’s various membership tiers, or to download and keep digitally via redeemable codes or the online PlayStation Store.
The announcement has not been well received. My dear colleague Lewis Empson reacted to the news at the time, bemoaning the fact that this move away from the good old-fashioned disc represented another nail in the coffin for physical media as a whole.
Not for the first time, it looks as though Lewis is absolutely right.
More nail than coffin at this point
The implications, as Lewis has already touched upon, are profound. The abandonment of physical discs probably means that forthcoming consoles will no longer house a disc slot. So anyone who currently uses their PlayStation to play Blu-rays, for example, would no longer be able to do so on newer consoles.
Lewis also touched on the death of the joy that the humble disc brings. As he wrote at the time: “You can forget lending a game to your friend, or selling it on when you have finished playing it. Likewise, those who prefer to buy games on the second-hand market to save money will be out of luck from 2028 onwards.”
And that, my fellow sufferers, is the crux of why I too am bemoaning the sad, unceremonious death of games in their physical form. It’s only PlayStation for now, but who knows what Microsoft has planned for Xbox? The signs aren’t positive, that’s all I will say.
As someone who has been gaming since the late ’90s, the death of the disc represents the end of an era. From slotting a copy of Age of Empires II into my parents’ creaking Dell desktop to having endless iterations of FIFA put my temperamental Xbox 360 into near-meltdown, those shiny circles have stored more than mere data. For me, they house tangible, precious memories.
This is the real tragedy which the demise of Sony’s physical production is helping to precipitate. I wrote a while back about the joys of tangible media in an audio and hi-fi context, getting all doey-eyed about the joyous ritual inherent in unpacking your favourite vinyl records or even giving a shiny CD a cheeky spin.
As I wrote at the time, so much of the appeal of owning a turntable or CD player “comes from their physical aspects, be that interacting with the product themselves or the ownership of a collection of CDs or records to play on them.
“As CDs hold strong and vinyl sales continue to soar in an age of digital streaming, those aspects of use have clearly become more important than ever with users for whom poking a smartphone to load up Spotify isn’t scratching a very particular itch.”
Replace ‘CDs’ with ‘physical games’ and ‘Spotify’ with ‘the PlayStation Store’ and the point is just the same.
What sort of collections will any of us have now? Even if you will still be able to download games individually and enjoy full ownership – in contrast to the subscription, Netflix-inspired model the games industry keeps so desperately trying to implement – it’s simply not the same as owning an actual, real-world collection.
You can’t line your office’s shelves with digital copies of all your favourite titles. You can’t enjoy the infinite pleasure of taking the thin layer of cellophane off of a copy of, say, Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag. You won’t be able to get deluxe physical copies anymore, which often come with real-world goodies such as maps, collectables and exclusive artwork. Maybe they’ll just flog those to us separately – for an inflated fee, of course.
You can’t even sit back and wallow in the soulless raft of digital copies saved to your console in the same way that you might admire the perfectly ordered racks adorning the wall of your musty man cave.
The thing is, I have spent time building up my games collection, in the same way that I’ve spent time building my small arsenal of CDs, DVDs and vinyl. Okay, I have only two vinyl records, one of which was a gift, but that’s part of the collector’s journey. It took time to accumulate all of my precious games, from formative PC classics such as Rome: Total War through to my roster of Xbox 360 releases and my PS4 and PS5 titles. All for nought.
Housed on its own carefully ordered shelving unit, that entire collection isn’t just a bunch of games shoved unceremoniously into a metaphorical pile. It’s a part – in a small, silly way – of my history. It’s my own personal gaming journey, and now it seems as though that journey is coming to an end.
The game’s afoot
The injustice doesn’t stop there. As if this all weren’t bad enough, the pleasure of tangible ownership isn’t the only real-world delight we gamers are now set to lose out on.
Can I be honest with you? I like second-hand stores.
No, they’re not the grooviest spots on God’s green Earth – most have a customer base with an average age somewhere in the 80s and many smell like damp cardboard mixed with Werther’s Originals – but they’re still great places.
If it’s a full-blown charity shop, you get the obvious benefit of helping out worthy causes. Even if they’re not charity-focused, you still have the lovely environmental bonus of reducing the need for further first-hand manufacturing, whether you’re selling or buying. Most importantly, they are often extremely cheap.
In a time when it seems that all the games industry wants to do is take your money, be it through skyrocketing base game prices, ludicrously exploitative microtransactions and even more ludicrously exploitative ‘loot packs’ – essentially a form of legalised gambling often aimed at children and teenagers – it’s nice to level the playing field with a bit of bargain-bin hunting.
Why, for example, would you pay at least £60 for a day-of release when you could wait a while and get the same game for less than half price?
Admittedly, there are certain games that you want to get hold of straight out of the gate – I can’t imagine many are going to wait more than an extra second for GTA VI – but the easiest way to save a monumental chunk of cash is simply to wait a few months and get a second-hand copy.
If you really want to find the best bargains, then pre-owned physical editions are always the way to go. PlayStation (and Xbox, as far as I know) will often offer big digital deals on titles that aren’t doing so well; but those tend to be seasonal and, more importantly, there’s generally a cap on by how much they will be reduced.
There’s no actual stock that needs shifting, so there is less incentive to drop to ridiculous depths, unless the game in question is unspeakably dreadful. (If you see Babylon’s Fall or Forespoken on a 65 per cent discount, just walk away.)
With proper material games, though, you can get some truly mammoth savings. Thanks to charity stores, second-hand retailers such as CEX, and online marketplaces such as Vinted or eBay, you can pick up some awesome bargains for mere pennies. I managed to find an old copy of Far Cry 4 for about £2 the other day, and a PS5 version of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales for less than a tenner.
That’s the joy of the used market. Much like going to old vinyl stores, car boot sales or charity shops for unearthed vinyl gems, snooping around for a gaming bargain holds similar scope for unearthing a diamond deal. You have to put the work in and do some digging, but that’s a huge part of the fun. Who knows? You might dig out a Classic Edition of The Orange Box for 50p. Ah, heaven.
Or, of course, you could just borrow games from one of your mates, and lend them something of yours in return. I think one of my pals still has my copy of Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey somewhere. He’s welcome to keep it, to be honest – I’m much more of a Black Flag and AC: II kind of a guy.
Lending doesn’t make as much money for the games industry as everyone buying their own distinct, non-transferable digital copy, though, does it? Makes you think…
Sony’s decision to cull all forms of physical release seems utterly at odds with the wants and needs of its current consumer base.
At a time when both established consumers and younger audiences are discovering, or indeed rediscovering, the joys of physical media and tangible content ownership, Sony/PlayStation has decided to turn its back on this clear desire in favour, one suspects, of tying people further into the models of consumption which suit its needs, rather than those of the end consumer.
In an age when the experience of streaming and purely digital consumption can feel impersonal and even soulless, buyers want something they can discover, interact with, enjoy, collect and own with pride.
Just like listening to music or watching movies, gaming is a pastime that goes far beyond the playing of the actual game. Maybe Sony needs to be reminded of that fact.
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