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

blog.playstation.com

661–670 of 833 posts

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

#661
post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walking away from the closed platform you invested hundreds/thousands of dollars into over the years is a luxury (especially if you were mislead into buying a PS5 with a disc drive thinking it'd be supported at least until the end of the product's lifespan) Monopolies, anti-competitive behavior, and anti-consumer behavior in general are all bad bad bad. You have to be a very interesting individual to disagree with th…

Console is the kind of thing where you upgrade every few years like for obviously games you bought for ps3 or PS4 don't work in the PS5 or Xbox 360 for Xbox one you have to buy one for each console. So people will switch to the competition, you can see on the sales of each consoles where their peak was. People might even get tired of Nintendo,Sony and Microsoft and just go with steam and valve

Every ps4 game works on ps5.

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

#662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That will last only as long as boomers are still around watching movies.

I'm Gen Z and I buy DVDs (though mostly second hand). You're probably right on the whole, though I've only observed the opposite.

Why DVD and not Blu-ray? The reason I said boomers buy DVD is because there are still a lot of senior citizens that are not internet savvy that like to rent out movies from their libraries, the dvds are simpler to operate, are more reliable from deep scratches, and a lot of boomers have simple equipment. Most of them don't care about perceived quality. This market is big enough that ironically DVDs may actually outlive Blu-Ray. Its the format that wont die. In fact I bet part of the reason Blu-Ray is being kept alive is due to studios already putting in the work to produce DVDs.

I spoke to my local librarian who cited this as the reason they haven't bothered with 4K blueray despite it being 10+ year old technology at this point.

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

#663
post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The trouble with that is you cannot operate a business where you pay your suppliers for a product then give everything away. I am saying that as a reflection of reality, not to absolve Sony. Someone at Sony must have understood that their licensing agreements were incompatible with the definition of sale. Someone else likely stuck some clauses into the EULA to reflect that, fully realizing that no-one reads those thi…

Sounds like fraud.

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

#664
post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I made a decision to get away from other consoles and only invest in Steam a while ago. In the 2010s I was a big Vita player but Sony backed away from investing in the Vita and I saw that the kind of Japanese games I liked were coming out on Steam so I sold my Vita.

Steam has been (mostly) a good citizen. But there's not much in the way of legal or technical hurdles to them going down the same path. It's all goodwill and reputation.

I hope it's enough.

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

#665
post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a monopoly on disks for the PlayStation.

It's amazing how many people throw around the word monopoly without remotely understanding what it means.

They were using the word correctly, "monopoly" doesn't only mean greatly dominant player in an open market. Current consoles are by definition vertical monopolies.

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

#666
post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have profits gone down?

No, but they're also monetizing a bunch of extra ways that they weren't in the past. In the PS2 era, Sony made money from the cut of physical games and accessories and maybe the console itself if it was purchased far enough into the console lifespan. These days they have online subs, cuts of DLC and microtransactions plus all the other stuff they had previously. And they get bigger cuts for DLC, microtransactions and…

IIRC, the PS2 was sold at a loss, most of the profits came from accessories like controllers and memory cards. I worked at circuit city at the time which is why I remember this. The employee discount (at cost, essentially) did not exist for the console. I was irritated so I did some digging and that was what I had found.

Nope, no sources. That was like… 2 lifetimes ago.

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

#667
post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just get everything on the high seas for free, instead of paying for used-bin stuff which is cheap but still costs something? I’m a huge cinephile with a collection on my hard drives of ripped Blu-ray and DVD images, a number running now into the four figures, and I have almost never paid for a physical disc; I own something like 6 that are in a box somewhere.

Because within my job/industry, getting caught pirating would end my career.

It's interesting how attitudes towards this are so different across industries. Jeff Gerstmann is a fairly well known and well connected video game journalist and he straight up does streams where he plays emulators using romsets clearly downloaded from the internet.

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

#668
post #576
post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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…

> 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).

This is how movies work on GOG.

In what might not be a coincidence, they haven't released any movies for many years, and the product category isn't even visible if you don't already own a movie through them.

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

#669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hilariously, DVD production could potentially outlive Blu-Ray discs, since DVDs are still popular enough 30 years later, and surpass the sales of Blu-Ray movies.

unfortunately mpeg2 is still standard for them so i guess people have to stick to 480i on double layer i guess, unless stars align and someone decide to make av1/opus standard for them lol

A surprising amount of newer-ish DVD players will play H.264 off a DVD just fine and AVCHD is essentially Bluray formats and file structs on a DVD.

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

#670
post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made a decision to get away from other consoles and only invest in Steam a while ago. In the 2010s I was a big Vita player but Sony backed away from investing in the Vita and I saw that the kind of Japanese games I liked were coming out on Steam so I sold my Vita.

Steam has been (mostly) a good citizen. But there's not much in the way of legal or technical hurdles to them going down the same path. It's all goodwill and reputation. I hope it's enough.

If steam ever goes up in smoke, there will be infinite justification to never trust download only ever again.
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