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

But that's not how the numbers work. I bought a PS5 (instead of gaming on Steam or Xbox) because I could buy physical discs, and I like having them. I buy digital games from time to time as well, but if the PS5 hadn't supported physical games at all, I wouldn't have bought one in the first place, just as I most likely won't buy a PS6 because of this announcement.

They've had a couple pretty well-received Pokemon launches in Z-A (not quite mainline, but also about as close as you can get outside of an actual mainline games) and Pokopia (which kind of took everyone by surprise how well-designed it actually was), and don't forget the that the Switch 1 era was sandwiched by two insanely popular Zelda launches that virtually reinvented the franchise and brought a huge number of new fans to it (myself included; I had never played a Zelda game before 2017) who would potentially be extremely interested in a remake of one of the more popular older games. They wouldn't be slipping compared to the Switch 1 Zelda renaissance if they took another six years from the previous title to come out with an original one, which would put it in 2029.

I'm not saying they don't have their issues; Pokemon launches since the late 3DS era have been somewhat notorious for performance issues (and of course aren't technically developed first-party, although they're certainly Nintendo exclusive, and I think there's a pretty strong argument that bringing them in house might actually improve the situation), and the Mario Kart entry for the Switch 2 seems to have been considered somewhat lackluster, but I don't think it's totally reasonable to start making long-term predictions yet. In the aftermath of the Wii craze, it would be easy to make similar predictions given the lows of the Wii U era, but they obviously came back pretty strong in the following generation, and there doesn't seem to be much evidence that they've come close to sinking that low again yet.

I think they tend to try to vary the order that they do major releases between generations. The Switch 1 era had Breath of the Wild as a launch title (that also launched on Wii U, which is easy to forget), and Mario Odyssey came up before the end of that year, and they re-released the Wii U version of Mario Kart rather than coming out with an original entry. After the huge cultural zeitgeist around Wii Sports when it was paired alongside a Zelda title for the Wii, they seem to have been trying to repeat that with somewhat quirky minigame compilations alongside major franchises; the Wii U had a weird theme park thing with the new Mario game, and they paired Breath of the Wild with the extremely forgettable 1-2-Switch and a co-op puzzle game that I don't think I ever heard of anyone actually playing.

My first thought reading this was I wonder if Sony is planning to wind down or spin off Sony DADC, their commercial optical disc manufacturing subsidiary they’ve run since the dawn of the CD.

Sony DADC presses every PlayStation games but also has spent decades manufacturing CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, UHD Blu-rays, software, and other optical media for 3rd party customers across the entertainment and computer industry.

If PlayStation discs disappear in 2028, that removes one of the last massive, guaranteed sources of demand for optical disc production inside Sony. Even if the plants continue serving movies, music, and third-party clients for a while, it’s hard not to wonder if this announcement is also the beginning of the end for one of the last major end-to-end optical media manufacturers in the supply chain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Digital_Audio_Disc_Corpor...

https://www.sonydadc.com/productsandservices/manufacturing

Consumers need to fight back on this, and I don't just mean by protesting or complaining.

Consumers need to start buying more used media instead of buying new.

They need to use services like GOG.com instead of Steam, even if it's less convenient.

They need to decide that if they can't buy a DRM-free or a physical copy of something then they simply won't buy it, and be confident in that decision instead of caving in to FOMO.

It requires a mindset change which I fear will be too difficult for most -- which is exactly what Sony is banking on.

Reading through Steam's list of what's allowed or not, it all seems very reasonable:

* Up to 6 people can share games in a family account

* Each account can join as an adult or a child

* No age verification done, the person who created the account simply marks each invitation as "join as an adult" or "join as a child"

* Adult members have parental controls over child members and can control which games they have access to

* Child members must get purchases approved by an adult member

* No requirement for any particular family structure, like limiting it to two adults. Six roommates sharing a large house can form a Steam family if they want.

The only thing that is even slightly restrictive is the one-year cooldown on joining a new Steam family group if you leave the old one, and even that is pretty reasonable. (Without that, people would abuse the system by saying "Hey, join my family group real quick and I'll share my copy of Portal 2 with you, then leave the group when you're done). Plus, if you're rejoining the family group you just left then there's no cooldown, so "Oops, I clicked the Leave button by mistake" doesn't penalize you.