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

blog.playstation.com

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

#641

Post by saghm »

mikepurvis wrote: post #400
theK wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't requirements like online server based verification and advancing crypto make it almost impossible to pirate these games?

Yes, for play-online titles for sure, but I think everything up to Xbox 360 / PS3 era has robust emulation and wide distribution of the whole library. Obviously it's gotten harder over the years, but PS4 and PS5 jailbreaks do exist so that means there's a vector for dumping games that were only ever distributed digitally (at least ones released up to the point where the jailbreaks got patched, as the stores will refu…

There's a bit of a hit-or-miss situation for them, from what I can tell. I recently spent some time trying to figure out which MLB The Show titles worked for emulation, and somehow after the 2010 entry, all of the remaining PS3 ones have a notorious noticeable bug where the middle (from right behind the pitcher going all the way down to the center field fence) the field is covered with random fans or other "debris", for lack of a better world. As far as I can tell, it's been known for years (I think it's an instance of the general problem of Z-fighting), but either no one knows the exact solution, or the people working on the emulators have so many other things to work on that it's not a priority.

On the other hand, the fact that people have spent enough time to write down which entries have this bug and which don't (and potentially even which stadiums have it and don't in the entries that do have the bug, since it's apparently not consistent across them) does lead credence to the idea that the library is pretty widely distributed.

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

#642

Post by pseudosavant »

Marcan wrote: post #447
fcsp wrote: post #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-...

And don't forget closing the PS3 and Vita Playstation stores, which they announced at the same time: https://blog.playstation.com/2026/07/01/an-update-on-playsta... This is a weird marketing strategy. They must feel free to do as they please since they know consumers are trapped.

And it doesn't have to be this way. I started buying Xbox games digitally for the Xbox 360, and with their backwards compatibility that ended up being a great choice. My current XSX plays games for the last 3 generations of digital purchases I've made.

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

#643

Post by pseudosavant »

fcsp wrote: post #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-...

The sad reality of DRM is that only rentals and subscriptions can honestly be done with it. You can guarantee access to a subscription library (Netflix, Xbox Game Pass, etc) for 30 days. You cannot guarantee access 30+ years in the future. And selling access like that is just a lie.

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

#644

Post by zamadatix »

rubyfan wrote: post #618
II2II wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They must feel free to do as they please since they know consumers are trapped. My take is somewhat difference: Sony is offloading the cost of their prior decisions onto consumers. For things like movies, they should have negotiated a contract where sold copies are sold copies and cannot be revoked (even if their right to sell/rent copies lapse). For things like the PS3 store, it cannot be run indefinitely. That sa…

> They would have to refund everyone for every purchase in the long run. That is the minimum they should do. At best they should offer the movie collections for free through competitors.

There's no limit to what the best they could do is. A full refund is just what's simple, fair, and quick. I wouldn't put it past them to try to find some legal basis that the minimum is actually less than that in certain jurisdictions though.

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

#645

Post by NathanielK »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #413
runarberg wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know the stats but I would guess more people have DVD players then Blu-Ray, so it makes sense for libraries to rather offer DVDs. DVDs is also one of these things that is good enough. The jump in quality between DVD and Blu-Ray is very unnoticeable (when fully immersed) compared to e.g. between VHS and DVD (or even between vinyl and CD).

The jump in quality from DVD to Blu-ray is huge , as much as it was from VHS to DVD. Going to 4k from there isn't noticeable, but going to HD in the first place is massive.

DVDs have pretty good bitrate, just lower res and old codecs. HD would be nice, but as long as you aren't using an old DVD player with composite, they look ok.

Much better than 480p youtube these days.

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

#646

Post by stuxnet79 »

Anamon wrote: post #520
phire wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH, 100% offline gaming has been problematic since day-one patches became the norm in the PS3 era. Sure, you might be play version 1.0 of the game from the disc, but often the experience was pretty compromised without the patch, often very buggy, or sometimes even features missing. And the PS5 is meant to be able to play digitally downloaded while disconnected (at least the ones you own, not the PS+ games). It's jus…

I remember getting some Gran Turismo game for my PS3 back in the day, having to wait for it to slowly copy XX gigabytes of data to the hard drive, then being stupid enough to want to start the game while being online which meant having to download once more the exact same number of gigabytes (hello, incremental patches?) over an even slower Wi-Fi connection. I bought the game on a Saturday afternoon and was looking f…

This is the reason the PS2 is having a resurgence in popularity. With FreeMcBoot and TB of storage you can backup your entire collection and play it at your convenience. There are a non-trivial number of PS3 games that are basically unplayable unless they get patched. With digital storefronts getting shut down left and right there is no guarantee that the disc will yield anything valuable, it's basically a paperweight.

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

#648

Post by saghm »

mywittyname wrote: post #337
CM30 wrote: post #165

Well, if Nintendo and Microsoft go the same route (and sadly, I see that being almost inevitable at some point), that's probably the end of my interest in gaming as a whole. I generally refuse to 'rent' or 'license' things on a temporary basis, and have decided in this generation that every game I'll get for Switch 2 will be a physical game on cart version, without exception. And the reasons for that are pretty simpl…

Counter-argument: I have a Steam account associated with a day 1 purchase of Half Life 2 (so, 25 years or so). Every game I've ever purchased is still available for me to download, while I lost probably 50% or more of my physical games collection. If I'm renting those games, it sure seems like a good deal. I do appreciate that console online market places have not historically been as well managed as Steam. But also,…

The other reason that a PC is a bit different for this is that the backwards compatibility for console generations is almost always going to be worse than the ability to run games (even if they came out on previous versions of Windows) on whatever the current OS you have installed. Plus, even when stuff doesn't work by default, you'll still likely have a much easier time modding it to get things working than on a console. For years before they re-released the older Sims games on Steam, there was forum post where someone had meticulously documented a process for working around various issues that would crop up when trying to install the Sims 3 on a modern version of Windows, and even though it was error prone and the game crashed a lot, it still worked (and tbh the game apparently just crashed a lot back in the day too, so it was arguably just being true to the original behavior).

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

#649

Post by mikepurvis »

saghm wrote: post #641
mikepurvis wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, for play-online titles for sure, but I think everything up to Xbox 360 / PS3 era has robust emulation and wide distribution of the whole library. Obviously it's gotten harder over the years, but PS4 and PS5 jailbreaks do exist so that means there's a vector for dumping games that were only ever distributed digitally (at least ones released up to the point where the jailbreaks got patched, as the stores will refu…

There's a bit of a hit-or-miss situation for them, from what I can tell. I recently spent some time trying to figure out which MLB The Show titles worked for emulation, and somehow after the 2010 entry, all of the remaining PS3 ones have a notorious noticeable bug where the middle (from right behind the pitcher going all the way down to the center field fence) the field is covered with random fans or other "debris",…

Definitely another case where Nintendo platforms benefit from everyone having a shared understanding of which are the marquee, must-work titles; like every Mario and Zelda and Pokemon game will emulate flawlessly and after that is the long tail playable-but-maybe-buggy ones.

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

#650

Post by asdaqopqkq »

They should make a draconian law that if anyone for any reason caused by the vendor is unable to access the game afte paying for it, the vendor will have to upload that game in a torrent for free for everyone on the planet. The people will decide how long the torrent lives.
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