No physical discs for Playstation games (1st & 3rd party) from 2028 onward

  • Thread starter Thread starter Fezzik
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Very sad news; the end of an era. I have mixed feelings on this. I went all digital on PS4, don't want a PS5, but think that PS2 was the best. PS3 was where it all started to go downhill (I did buy a couple of digital downloads). Hmmm...
 
Ryan81
While it's possible that you could pay more, what if you end up paying less? That's surely a positive, right? Or alternatively, just wait for the price to change again.
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Crucially, I didn't say "more" or "less". I said "different".

Does it seem reasonable to you that you and someone else in your house are required to pay different prices for the same thing, bought from the same storefront, on the same device?

And yes, it's certainly being marketed as individual, targeted deals (thus discounts). I don't think it takes much to imagine that the reverse could also be true.
Ryan81
And even if you rent it rather than own it- who cares? It's not going to make a massive difference to your life if you're able to sell it on the second-hand market or not. We're talking about a game here, not a business or a classic car.
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Last week, due to a licensing issue, PlayStation removed over 550 movies from its service and from the consoles of people who'd bought them. They quite literally reached into their devices and removed access to content they'd paid for.

Now let's see if you "get the whole negativity" and care when they do that to a game you spent £80 on.
 
I know this sounds like a pipe dream, but wouldn't it make much more sense (for the consumer, anyway) for PD to develop a system that means the games run on a glorified USB stick, like Nintendo? I'm not trying to pretend I'm some genius here, but here are some of the benefits:
-Less packaging and manufacturing costs
-You still own/trade/collect/resell copies of the game physically
-No need for Blu-ray systems that Sony is abandoning anyway
-More versatility to develop high-demand game graphics (vs discs)

In a way, it would benefit Sony too, if they weren't so hasty as to immediately ditch all common sense and go all digital.
In some ways this the all-digital currency argument. "Everyone wants digital." Yes, but as soon as you ask anyone they will all say "But we still want physical as an option." This may seem like a bit of a rant here, but if you think my this is at least a good idea please like this post. :)
 
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LeMansLambo14
I know this sounds like a pipe dream, but wouldn't it make much more sense (for the consumer, anyway) for PD to develop a system that means the games run on a glorified USB stick, like Nintendo? I'm not trying to pretend I'm some genius here, but here are some of the benefits:
-Less packaging and manufacturing costs
-You still own/trade/collect/resell copies of the game physically
-No need for Blu-ray systems that Sony is abandoning anyway
-More versatility to develop high-demand game graphics (vs discs)

In a way, it would benefit Sony too, if they weren't so hasty as to immediately ditch all common sense and go all digital.
In some ways this the all-digital currency argument. "Everyone wants digital." Yes, but as soon as you ask anyone they will all say "But we still want physical as an option." This may seem like a bit of a rant here, but if you think my "game on a chip" idea is a good one please like this post. :gtpflag:
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But then they still have to manufacture and distribute and give retailers a cut and can't control pricing.
They don't want you buying/selling games, all they see from what is lost revenue.

While I don't like the dropping of physical media, the proposal has all the downsides and nothing positive for Sony.
 
DriveSpark
But then they still have to manufacture and distribute and give retailers a cut and can't control pricing.
They don't want you buying/selling games, all they see from what is lost revenue.

While I don't like the dropping of physical media, the proposal has all the downsides and nothing positive for Sony.
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True. Sony is a corporate business and does not care for the consumer, just profit. :irked:

The advantages of this idea is vs disks, not vs digital (unfortunately)
 
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I've got a question regarding this helix idea...

So if the idea is you effectively transfer your physical game disk into digital yes, but what about delisted games & licensing issues?

Should you rush out & start buying 2nd hand copy's of all the delisted games that xbox have removed from their digital store (example) PC Goty/PC2 any old Forza's etc?
 
Well, I've sunk well over US$1,000 on PC gaming since 2023 (only on the hardware side), and if I just want to keep up I may have to spend about $1,000 more, and that's just for a partial revamp (GPU and maybe CPU).

I've been able to justify these expenses because I also work on my PC, thus, they count as business expenses and are amortized over time.

But $1,000 on a console?... that's a big no.
 
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Mr Grumpy
So if the idea is you effectively transfer your physical game disk into digital yes, but what about delisted games & licensing issues?
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This will depend on the partners and what titles they want to offer. I thing it could be similar to what gog + publishers did for a while where they transfered steam games also to the gog account (GOG Connect)...
 
Fezzik
All these Microsoft posts will be even funnier when they do the exact same thing with Helix. There are no good guys here, Sony just went first.
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To be frank, both were testing the waters with digital-only editions of their consoles. They probably wanted to see how well it'd do on the market compared to the ones with a disc drive.
 
Mr Grumpy
I've got a question regarding this helix idea...

So if the idea is you effectively transfer your physical game disk into digital yes, but what about delisted games & licensing issues?

Should you rush out & start buying 2nd hand copy's of all the delisted games that xbox have removed from their digital store (example) PC Goty/PC2 any old Forza's etc?
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My plan moving forward is to get a rock solid PS3 to play the back catalogue of 1, 2, & 3 games. I have a 4 already for those games and I have a 5. I'm working on replacing all my digital download games with physical copies and if a game can't run without being online it's a game I get rid of.

I live in an area of the US that experiences frequent power and internet outages (at least 3-5 per year between the two services) due to weather events so being able to play offline via my generator is important to me.

I would expect anyone who wants to keep playing delisted games to go and buy a physical copy of that game or it's highly likely they will lose access completely.
 
art3mis
My plan moving forward is to get a rock solid PS3 to play the back catalogue of 1, 2, & 3 games. I have a 4 already for those games and I have a 5. I'm working on replacing all my digital download games with physical copies and if a game can't run without being online it's a game I get rid of.

I live in an area of the US that experiences frequent power and internet outages (at least 3-5 per year between the two services) due to weather events so being able to play offline via my generator is important to me.

I would expect anyone who wants to keep playing delisted games to go and buy a physical copy of that game or it's highly likely they will lose access completely.
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I only own 3 games for my Series X, Project Cars 2 Deluxe Edition, Wreckfest Complete Edition & WRC10 Deluxe Edition, all digital purchases.

To be honest none of this bothers me if Microsoft decides to screw customers over eventually because I'm already planning to migrate back from a crap laptop to a decent PC where I'll just purchase AMS2, Wreckfest 2 & another Rally Game to go with all the other old Sims I've already got on Steam.
 
Mr Grumpy
I only own 3 games for my Series X, Project Cars 2 Deluxe Edition, Wreckfest Complete Edition & WRC10 Deluxe Edition, all digital purchases.

To be honest none of this bothers me if Microsoft decides to screw customers over eventually because I'm already planning to migrate back from a crap laptop to a decent PC where I'll just purchase AMS2, Wreckfest 2 & another Rally Game to go with all the other old Sims I've already got on Steam.
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That's great for you. My entire point is that if it's digital it isn't yours and if it requires being online (ala Steam) it isn't yours. I want the things I have to be MY things not things I am borrowing from a licensing agent.
 
art3mis
That's great for you. My entire point is that if it's digital it isn't yours and if it requires being online (ala Steam) it isn't yours. I want the things I have to be MY things not things I am borrowing from a licensing agent.
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My 3 games on the Xbox work offline, I only need internet to play online & a subscription obviously, if my Xbox breaks I can't play them anymore whether they're digital or not. But if they do release a digital only next gen console at least I can re-download my digital games, something you can't do if you had physical media.

Same with Steam, you can use the Steam client if you want but you can remove the game files from steam into a root directory & launch them without even opening steam.

I understand a lot of people want physical media & by all means at least give us a choice & not forced, possibly even give us the option to transfer the files to a storage device of our choice so you can have some form of physical media but honestly I've been through it all, hundreds of films on tapes & dvds, thousands of music on vinyl, tapes & cds plus countless games of all media types across multiple platforms through the years since the late 80s & honestly I'm happy all that clutter has gone from my life, I've still got most of it transferred into digital form.
 
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It's been about a week now, and it's still almost overwhelmingly negative. I think Sony really has made a mistake by doing this. They announced that fighting stick thing yesterday, and everyone was either ripping them apart, or doing joke questions on how to "Download it"

For me as well, the PS5 still has plenty of life still in it, so I'm not looking to get a PS6 anytime soon (Or probably, ever)
 
It’ll come as a shock to them when the tech enthusiasts who don’t buy the PS6 also don’t buy Sony TVs, soundbars, headphones, etc. There is a whole ecosystem here.
 
Carpocalypse
I think Sony really has made a mistake by doing this.
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The mistake is the dishonesty over the reason.

Sure, digital is 3:1 over physical for "full game software" (and that's a plateau now) but every big sales quarter is accompanied by a drop in that ratio suggesting that it's older, cheaper, discounted games selling mainly digital and new and hyped games tending to sell more physical copies.

The reason is Blu-ray is a dead format and there is no successor. Physical discs are no longer capable of holding the bloated games (and this will only get worse when they all pursue 8K), and have been left behind on data transfer rates by internet bandwidth and even further behind by SSDs.

There isn't a disc drive they can include on PS6 that is of any use for PS6 games even at the start of the generation, and PS1-5 games can be streamed so the small fraction of us who might want to pop an old disc in our new console (particularly for games not available to stream) aren't worth making the PS6 bigger and more expensive than it needs to be - given that it'll already be £1000 or more because data centers are a black hole for NAND memory.

For some reason they want to pretend this is about consumer choice instead of laying out the fact their hands are tied. I can't work out the PR angle here that has led them on that path; BD sales won't suffer by admitting this because they barely make any non-PS5 ones.

Nobody paying attention to the home cinema space was surprised by the decision, just the horsecrap reasoning.
 
suomi1
It’ll come as a shock to them when the tech enthusiasts who don’t buy the PS6 also don’t buy Sony TVs, soundbars, headphones, etc. There is a whole ecosystem here.
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So many people bought the disc version of the PS5 so they could watch 4K UHD Blurays on it as well as play games. As has been the way since the PS2 and DVDs. Those with substantial collections of films will not buy PS6s when they come out because they can no longer use their console as a Bluray player*. If they feel forced into buying a dedicated UHD Bluray player because of it they are unlikely to be 'shopping Sony' for these things anymore.


*unless the massive backlash pushes them into creating an attachable add on disc player for the PS6, like they did for the Slim and Pro PS5s.
 
Famine
and have been left behind on data transfer rates by internet bandwidth
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I've seen you posting this multiple times and I have to say it is not true for every country/place :D
In germany (some say it's a first world country) there are places where you could get 10+ GBit/s via optical fibers and not even 50 meter further you will get with luck 16MBit/s via dsl. You could try lte/5g but this is often fluctuating between awesome (high throughput, low latency) and not working (latencies similar to snail mail) ._.
 
i386
I've seen you posting this multiple times and I have to say it is not true for every country/place
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I know. It can't be: there's places even here in the UK that are not hardwired to and are not able to be hardwired to telecommunications infrastructure (satellite is, of course, available more broadly now, but suboptimal for streaming something interactive).

This is why I keep giving, in some of the multiple times, median bandwidth figures and refer to developed countries. In the UK that's now over 200Mbps (twiceish the bandwidth of a PS5-format Blu-ray) compared to just 50Mbps (half that of the Blu-Ray) a decade ago. And the UK is not exactly at the forefront of domestic bandwidth - in France the median is over 300Mbps:
Famine
Even if they could, the bandwidth of Blu-ray is now less than the average bandwidth of internet connections in a lot of the developed world,
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Famine
Lasers take time to read what's on the disc, and even Blu-ray can only hit 100Mbps. That's half the UK's average domestic internet bandwidth - 233Mbps - and the UK isn't exactly world-leading, but in ideal conditions you can stream data to your device down the internet twice as fast as you can from the disc inside it.
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The point is not that everyone everywhere gets "faster" internet than the data transfer rate of Blu-ray, but that the median in many developed countries is already well ahead and will only continue in that direction while discs (of any kind) will not.

PlayStation is developing the PS6 now, in this environment, and this will be a factor in the console's final form. It won't have an optical drive, and if you're very lucky PlayStation might sell you a separate external one for legacy media.


The submariners who hated the always-online Xbox One will loathe the PS6.
 
Famine
The reason is Blu-ray is a dead format and there is no successor.
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There could be, but major companies don't seem to have any interest in it (yet).

I think the reason why there won't be a successor for 4K Blu-ray is due to a significant decline in physical home media sales, rather than a smaller (though still large) decline in physical game sales.

The diminishing returns don't help, either - even regular Blu-rays can look fantastic on modern TVs, and nobody was interested in upgrading to 8K.
 
Nexus
There could be, but major companies don't seem to have any interest in it (yet).
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😁
Famine
There isn't really a next on either front - there's been some development, and there was an archival disc created in the same form factor with a 1TB capacity based on 32 layers of fluorescent material - but even if there were you hit the bitrate issue.
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DriveSpark
They don't want you buying/selling games, all they see from what is lost revenue.
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Which is exactly what it is from a business point of view. One person buys the game and then it gets secondhanded through four more, that's four people using the product without the original manufacturer, who put the money into making it in the first place, getting anything in return. I bet you wouldn't be happy if you ran a company selling things to people and only one in five customers paid for them but everyone used them.
 
Greycap
Which is exactly what it is from a business point of view. One person buys the game and then it gets secondhanded through four more, that's four people using the product without the original manufacturer, who put the money into making it in the first place, getting anything in return. I bet you wouldn't be happy if you ran a company selling things to people and only one in five customers paid for them but everyone used them.
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That mentality (lost revenue) is what is the death of everything. It's not lost revenue. Nothing that was already existing was removed. Nothing they had has been taken away.

"Lost ReVeNuE" is corpospeak for "money we didn't make that we feel entitled to and now it's everyone elses problem because we deserve all the money forever"
 

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