Jul 012026
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?
Bad and annoying choice. Physical is a lot cheaper and doesn’t take up so much disc space. If they are selling less then why not just make less instead of not making them at all.
Enshittification for sure. Moving away from physical media for games is bad for gamers, hands down. No physical preorders, no sharing among friends or borrowing from libraries, no second-hand market. And combining it with taking down the digital store for PS3 and Vita in practically the same breath also shows just how transient it is to have access to any of these games, and preserve them for the long term.
It also does not bode well for BluRay in general as a format, which Sony pioneered and pushed, when the biggest BluRay player on the market (playstation consoles) are now cutting out the production of game BluRays… I can only imagine movie DVDs will be what gets cut next…