The funeral for PlayStation discs has begun

Cody Spencer, owner of small game retailer Pink Gorilla Games, put it well when I asked about Sony’s recent announcement that it will stop making new game discs starting January 2028. “It’s sad to see. This idea is just bad for gamers. We’re losing out on selling games, owning games, and sharing games.”

Sony’s announcement has been disappointing news for many in the gaming industry. Not just gamers, but groups like independent retailers and developers who try to make games accessible.

“This is sad news for those who still like to buy games on social media, and it has serious implications for the rights of consumers, the retail market, and the game developers whose businesses depend on the market,” said Frank Cifaldi, executive director of the Video Game History Foundation. he says in his voice.

Boutique publishers are also complaining about PlayStation’s announcement. “We are deeply disappointed by Sony’s decision to stop making sports games in 2028,” says iam8bit in the statement. “Physical gaming is essential to game retention, ownership, and consumer choice, which has guided iam8bit since we first launched in 2016. Our commitment to these values ​​has not changed. Lost in the Cult, in his own wordshe says his goal is “to do everything we can to preserve video games as much as possible and we will continue to do so for as long as we can.”

But the move was not entirely new. For a long time, video game marketing has been digital – just look at Capcom to say that 93 percent of its game sales were digital in its last financial year. However, it’s disappointing for people who want to have games in a better format than as data on the hard drive.

The reality is that, despite the outcry, things will not be different for most people right away. “Physical sales of new PlayStation 5 games have been down for a while,” says Spencer. “So if I just switch to digital I don’t think we’ll see much change.”

In five to 10 years, Spencer expects to see “increased prices for printed titles before 2028 and greater demand for our products.” Even if it’s good for business, “I wish I wasn’t (that).”

Even beyond that, “the very concept of a physical video game is going to be weird and it’s going to look weird, which is not going to be good for us,” says Spencer. Our store can look like a recording studio.

Sony has been eyeing a digital-only future for some time. The PS5, after all, was launched in 2020 with a cheaper version without a disk drive, and the PS5 Pro requires a separate purchase of a disk if you want to play physical games at all. And this generation is not the first time that Sony launched electronic devices only; 2009’s PSP Go handheld didn’t have a UMD drive, Andrew Borman, director of digital preservation at The Strong National Museum of Play, reminded me.

“The challenges of digital preservation aren’t new, and they don’t just affect the video game industry,” Borman says, pointing to things like Internet connectivity, frequent game patches, and “a lot of game development done using digital tools.” But he says “it is important that we do something now to save the company’s reputation.

Borman says there will always be a market for used and new games, pointing to the resurgence of vinyl records. But losing access to PlayStation games still stings. “From a consumer’s point of view, choice matters, and losing that choice is unfortunate, especially for those who may not have reliable or fast Internet access — or who simply want to hear ownership of their purchases,” says Borman.

Cifaldi said that the change will not affect the work of conservationists. “The reality is that this is still going on,” Cifaldi said in an emailed statement Seaside. “Sony PlayStation is not the first to do this and it will not be the last, because most of the video games that were created in the last twenty years were not designed to be dedicated to home video games, not to take pressure from the media. Ours has been preparing for this future for a while, and I hope that putting discs on the shelf will not be a long way to store new games.”

It is important to know that the platform owners are doing it others to keep their old games from being played. Sony has IP Preservation GroupMicrosoft has created a collection of classic games to be played on modern Xbox devices because of the corresponding background softwareand Nintendo Switch Online’s retro guide is full of classics, including original titles as recently as the GameCube era.

GTA VIwhich will be sold in real stores but as a download code in the box, maybe it’s a preview of what’s to come. Given that not sold on discyou can’t sell the game, borrow it from a friend, or get a cheap used copy price 79.99 $. People can handle it GTA VIone of the greatest games of all time, but it wouldn’t feel right if it happened on every video game box on the store shelf.

Cifaldi calls on trade groups such as the Entertainment Software Association, which is resisting attempts to protect the past“providing effective solutions for archives and museums to legally preserve digital objects and make them searchable.” Cifaldi says that companies “need to come to the table on this issue, because they hope that museums will download the book. Grand Theft Auto VI and I hope it will last 50 years is not a way to save. “