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Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

blog.playstation.com

431–440 of 833 posts

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still buy CDs. They don't come with music videos usually but they sound greatr

Still have my 2014 Corolla which was the last year they included a CD player. My son is begging me to have it instead of trading it in when we get a new car this Fall. He's super into physical media which is crazy to see since he's a zoomer. I'm seeing a lot of kids in the zoomer generation coming back to physical media which is really cool. I play with two guys who are millennials and they're completely hooked on th…

I'm a zoomer. I use a flip phone and collect physical media. I play ripped CDs on my PS Vita while I'm on the go, though I would love minidisc if it was less expensive

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#433
post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sony in particular is doubling down on platform exclusives again. I was waiting for Ghost of Yōtei to come out on PC, but Sony cancelled the port. We're well and truly fucked without physical media for exclusives like this.

Except Sony is notoriously bad at actually securing their consoles.

It shouldn't be the case that this is relied upon. There needs to be a cultural shift in the industry back to physical - or at least, preservable - media.

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game companies should have to submit full copies of everything to run the game , servers and clients to the Library of Congress or Smithsonian for preservation

Why? Is there a lower form of “art” than always online AAA garbage? Im not going to lose any sleep over _COD 75: More of the Same Bullshit_ becoming lost media

That's just, like, your opinion man.

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#435
Great buildup on Sony's side to gain trust in this move in the gaming community ahead of this announcement when just this week they again pulled hundreds of "purchased" movies from customer's libraries without refund, reminding everyone that digital content is rented, not owned.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/06/sony-erases-digital-...

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#436
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me: resale value and being able to buy used games for cheap.

Exactly this. Today I can get a physical copy at release date for ~10 EUR cheaper than on the Playstation Store, then resell it for 3/4 of the price, or lend it to a friend easily. Everything about digital-only is anti-consumer. Games will be more expensive with fewer and less important discount, the second-hand market will be dead, and so will be sharing games to friends so they can experience it for free. Nintendo…

As a child trading in games I didn’t play anymore was a great way of getting the latest titles at a discount.

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#437

I think this is good. We don't need more e-waste for disks that get used for a year and thrown away. The games can live on a tiny hard disk that takes a fraction of the resources to produce.

Not really. If the services that grant you access to your own hard disk ever go under, you lose it. You do not have access to the files. You're effectively paying for a licence to play the game for a finite amount of time, for the same (if not higher) price that physical media used to cost.

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#438
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve have shown themselves to be reasonably trustworthy unlike say, Sony and Microsoft. If there are no disks then there is no point in consoles in my view, they're just worse computers.

Steam only exists because Valve forced players to install it, force an online activation, and permanently bind their retail copies of Half-Life 2 to a Steam account. They also forced patching which meant in an era of dialup you couldn't play your single player game for hours, and needed to be connected every 30 days or your game would stop working. None of the console manufacturers pulled that shit, that Valve gets a…

They are the only platform owners championing for an open platform. That should be enough to consider them above all others, no trust required.

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#439
post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, those things cost money, but the money that we want to make, we want to make it today. And this is how we make it. What economic incentive is there for preservation? (/takes off devil's advocate hat and puts on flame suit)

Nintendo has shown the way, for better or worse. Tightly managed first party IP with a lot of retro throwback games/compilations/crossovers/virtual console and an overly aggressive copyright approach to managing what people do with their IP (even if fair use). Nintendo plays the long game. They do not compete directly with Sony, Microsoft and the like.

The win/win scenario I think is recognizing there is a market for the preserved titles and putting the effort in to capture that market. There's effort involved in emulating old games to work on modern hardware.

But yes I think you're on to something that Nintendo plays the long game the best, they handle their IPs like Disney does: featuring them across multiple verticals that feed into each other. Its surprising to me how long its taken Nintendo to come back to movies and TV.

Actually now that I think about it, Disney's biggest shortcoming is their video game division despite many wonderful retro Disney and Lucasarts games at their disposal.

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#440

Between DRM, DLC, mandatory connectivity and the end of physical media, the future will look back on this era as the 'dark age' of digital gaming history. Maintaining activation servers, cloud storage and digital delivery costs money. If it doesn't disappear when the title reaches EOL, it certainly does when the company is gone or shifts business models. And draconian copyright laws create legal jeopardy around orpha…

Just these big titles. The indie scene is thriving really well. I'd say let AAA die, we don't really need massively expensive cultural production to enable us to tell stories to each other
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