I woke up this morning, went online, and was immediately blasted with the news that PlayStation is going all-digital.

Staring in January 2028, physical disc production of PlayStation games will end.

This is a huge disappointment to people like me who prefer physical games.

I almost always prefer to get physical games, and I’ll continue to do so for as long as possible. I like to have a physical game that I can hold in my hand and not need to download (yes, even though you need to install games from discs these days, most of those are still actually on the disc and can be installed without an Internet connection).

Now, I do play my share of digital games depending on the circumstances. I’m not saying I’ll never buy another PlayStation game after next year or anything like that.

But it will affect my purchasing habits. I frequently preorder physical games even if I don’t intend to play them at launch. I only preorder digital games if I plan to play them right away. Physical availability often influences which platform I buy a game on, too; there have been PlayStation games I chose over the Steam version because I wanted a physical copy. And I’m much more inclined to wait for a sale on digital games rather than buy them at full price.

So… I guess this is good news for my backlog, at least.

Meanwhile, they also announced that the PlayStation 3 and Vita stores are closing. Here, that will happen in July 2027.

We knew this was coming eventually, especially since they intended to shut them down five years ago and only backtracked because of how unpopular the decision proved to be. It was only a matter of time. Still, shutting down the older digital stores feels like an especially rough blow when it comes on top of the news that future PlayStation games will be digital-only.

What a morning for PlayStation news.

(Unrelated to PlayStation, there was at least one bright spot in today’s gaming news, as an unannounced Metroid game got rated in Brazil.)

How do you feel about the announcement of PlayStation’s plans going forward?