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Sony stopping disc production in 2028

Voncaster

Voncaster

***Delete this post if I'm duplicating posts here***

Sony has announced they are stopping disc production for PlayStation in 2028.

On the one hand this is crazy to me. Didn't XBOX announce that their console required an internet connection to play games (essentially making discs obsolete)? I thought that was a major factor in Sony overtaking XBOX. Sony also pioneered/popularized CD, DVD, and Blu-ray. Its crazy to me that given those two things they would walk away from disc production. If I'm not mistaken they handle Disney's blu ray disc production.

Also they just want to let Nintendo have all retailer shelf space?

On the other hand, Sony has stuck to its guns before and did okay. A $600 PS3 was a joke at the time of release. They withered initial unpopularity. Got the price down with revisions and matched or exceeded XBOX sales by the end of the generation.

***
This decision has been met with massive unpopularity. Its almost like Sony didn't know their audience.

Its probably also the case that its the vocal minority. I'm guessing Joe "Madden COD" player doesn't care where he gets his game from. But the vocal minority is shaping the story right now.

I would think they would walk this back. But I don't know how or if that is possible. Presumably it takes a lot of engineering and production contracts to launch a console. I would imagine PS6 design and manufacturing is getting ready to go. I don't think they can just add a disc drive at the last minute.

Maybe a stand alone disc drive. (A return the disc add on of old? I guess PS5 Pro does this now.)

At the end of the day, I just find it interesting that XBOX made this mistake, Sony benefited from it, and then didn't learn from it. Its kind of wild.
 
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They also just announced that they're shutting down the PS3 and Vita PSN stores next year. Trying to create the digital future at the same time they destroy the digital past.
 
I feel like that is outrage they can get away with. Not that I agree with the decision. Just that I imagine the number of players on those systems has to be small.

***
Valve is not also immune to destroying the digital past. I use a 32-bit Mac for internet. I have a handful of steam games 10-20. When apple upgraded to 64-bit operating system, Steam changed and half my games became unplayable. I think it has to do with old games being designed for old architecture and when new architecture comes along old games cease to work unless work is put into them to modernize them.
 
I still try to buy physical games whenever possible. I like having something on the shelf and knowing I own a game, even if it’s increasingly a buggy 1.0 version of the game on the disc. I hope they don’t do this!

Between this, shutting down the PS3 and Vita stores that are still the only legal way to purchase a lot of games, and straight up yoinking dozens of Studio Canal movies from customer’s devices in September, Sony is drowning in bad press.
 
Oh yeah, if the announcements came separately, they could get away with it, and realistically they will anyway, but they're showing one of the big reasons why ending disc production is bad at the same time that they announce they're doing it. If those stores are getting shut down now, someday the PS5 and PS6 stores will be shut down, too.

Maybe it's my inner optimist talking, but I almost wonder if this is a stunt. Like, you're probably right that most people won't care very much about physical media going away, but I can't imagine anyone sees it as a good thing. If they announced the PS6 formally and talked up its next-gen capabilities while also dropping a line about it not having a disc drive, there would at least be some hype for a new device to temper the outrage, and when they discontinued PS5 disc production in 2028 around the time the PS6 will presumably launch, it wouldn't seem that bad. It's pretty normal for physical releases for an old console to slow to a trickle or stop altogether once a new one comes out.

By doing it the way they are, though, they'll get nothing but bad press. But... if they announce a month later that they listened to The Gamers (tm) and are pleased to announce the PS6, with a disc drive attachment available at launch and physical releases of select games, coming holiday season 2027... they'd look great, wouldn't they? I mean, maybe not, Microsoft did irreparable damage to their brand with the always-online and Kinect integration stuff with the Xbox One even after walking them back. But I could imagine some marketing execs thinking this would be a good idea. It'd be more likely to sell people on their next console than what they're doing now, at least.
 
My question is: Even if they want to walk this back, can they?

If the PS6 store front is designed for digital only, how much effort work would it be to create an add on disc drive and make changes necessary to the store front to allow disc games when previously designed for no disc?

I'm sure it can be done. I just think the expense is going to be high for Sony.

I don't think this blows over in a couple months time. I think people will switch to PC and Nintendo if Sony sticks to its guns on this one. I think the hardcore gamers would be the first to abandon Sony. Then press will cause people who otherwise wouldn't care to also abandon Sony.

I'm guessing Sony is frantically weighing the costs of walking this back right now.

***
Cynical Take Time!
Thinking about this some more. I bet they walk this back.

When PS6 launches there will be a disc drive, it will just be so scarce that essentially there is not a disc drive. They will state they are working hard to meet demand. Once people have purchased the console its a sunk cost and they are unlikely to abandon it because of the disc drive.
 
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I'd be delighted to be wrong but I don't think Sony walks this back; there's no financial incentive to do so. As a pure business decision, it makes sense when over 85% of sales are digital. At some point, the infrastructure for disc manufacture, packaging, logistics and shipping costs, etc. no longer make any business sense if those things are devoted to only 15% of your revenue stream. Many folks who count themselves in that 15% will grumble mightily, as they are doing now, while making peace with digital-only games; a large part of that 15% isn't going anywhere. And from the commentary I've seen over the past two days - never read the commentary - the majority of PS gamers could not care less. For every single physical media enjoyer, there's 20 people who don't give a shit. The GTA6 "no physical disc" announcement was the appetizer for this. (Speaking of commentary, the schadenfreude I've seen from some digital-only folks relishing in the sadness of physical media folks is repulsive but not unexpected. See: John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.)

It wasn't that long ago we were asking questions about backwards compatibility. "Will the PS5 also play PS4 games? I don't want to lose my collection!" Less than a decade and one pandemic later, we're now all shrugging shoulders. Oh well. A digital-only PS6 future is a good incentive to start buying digital PS5 games now, so you can enjoy backwards compatiblity - until Sony, at some future state on some future device, decides you don't need that PS5 collection anymore. Sure, they are telling people with PS3s and Vitas that you can redownload the games you own - "own" - but that's a temporary measure, I assure you. There's real infrastructure costs in maintaining those networks, those servers, that data, and Sony is not going to eat those costs forever. And for those who correctly point out that oftentimes the disc is just a key, that the game is still downloaded and ran from storage, that is not an argument against physical discs. The disc-as-key reality was always a problem, too.

I won't comment on ownership. There's been plenty of ink spilled in the past two days about digital ownership or, more specifically, the lack thereof. Ask your favorite search engine and you'll find plenty to read. Likewise, no comment on sweat equity, something that absolutely matters to engagement but might be a broader topic than what I want to go into here. (It applies here, for sure, but it also applies to other media, especially music.)

As for me, I have to decide, and apparently sooner than I'd like, if I want to continue to participate. I've long maintained that a digital-only reality is not one I'm interested in. I still buy movies on disc, I buy music on vinyl and CDs. Books on Kindle? Perish the thought. Physical is the only way to go there. Re: Games: Do I bow out and take my leave, and if so, when? And that's not to suggest I don't own games digitally. Like so many, I have a vast Steam library but I see digital as a complement to physical, not as a replacement. Never as a replacement.

I'm reminded that all things are temporary. That does not take the sting out, it does not provide relief, in the here and now.
 
Sony said they already are repurposing the facility they use for making discs, so it's unlikely this gets reversed.
 
I feel like a guaranteed megahit like GTA 6 going digital-only is the band aid ripping off. I wouldn't be surprised if even other new PS5 and Xbox games have reduced physical runs or go digital-only even before they shut down production
 
Even beyond the disc stopping production, the way things have been going recently have been pushing me into the idea of being exclusively Nintendo + PC only. I will continue buying PS5 games as long as they make them (which may be for a while considering how long PS4 versions of games were being made) but I don't see myself buying a PS6. It's gonna be mega expensive and with that money I might as well get a quality PC. Besides, outside of the Spiderman games there have been few Sony 1st party games I have been interested in. And I've never been interested in Xbox at all.
 
We'll see I guess it depends on if this story gets bigger of if its just the weekend out rage and then we're on to the next story.

I kind of feel like this one has some staying power.

The point on GTA6 digital preparing people and the sliver of actual physical gamers are good points.
 
https://bsky.app/profile/stephentotilo.bsky.social%2Fpost%2F3mprdcnpcjs27

totilo claims that sony has told publishers they'll be able to produce reprints after the deadline, which makes it seem like this decision is more about shifting the paradigm than anything. (and it certainly seems like there's plenty of places capable of producing video blu-rays even outside of this.) and of course it already has. i've long said that sony's decision to try and make the margins on storage really harmed the vita overall, and that they should've known it would've benefited from being a primarily digital system. at the same time, to me, the discs are overwhelmingly the value margin that playstation has over steam of course, i already don't buy a ton of playstation games, and have the 5 as much out of an expectation it'll be a durable media station for the coming periond of life as to play games on.

all that is to say, obviously i think it's reasonable to say, this is something we want to reduce the resources we're using on it. cutting it off entirely certainly frustrates me, but i don't expect a lot of positive movement on that front. i don't necessarily think it's impossible, though. i wouldn't hate some kind of compromise. in the meantime, well, i'm thinking harder about picking up a second switch 2 even though our household has one already.
 
So obviously discs are exponentially more difficult to make than carts and require specialized machinery/programing/fancy magnets, but I do wonder if we'll start seeing homebrew versions of discs like we do with older carts in several years once people acquire some of this equipment as it's decommissioned. This would also affect patent spaces if they aren't keeping up with manufacture (that is decades away if I remember how patent stuff works, but still). Hmm.
 
Violentvixen said:
discs are exponentially more difficult to make than carts
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I would have thought the exact opposite. Discs have a layer of data burned or pressed in some material and then some plastic to seal it. Carts have chips and wiring; more components. Maybe switch games (flash carts?) vs PS5 discs is more competitive on price.

Historically I thought some PS1 games could sell dirt cheap compared to N64 games. Discs were way more cost efficient than carts.
 
the state of patching and drm across the past decade is already a nightmare for preservation; there's tons of games that won't boot off of media without connecting to a server.

obviously, ceasing to make them entirely doesn't help either
 
Violentvixen said:
So obviously discs are exponentially more difficult to make than carts and require specialized machinery/programing/fancy magnets, but I do wonder if we'll start seeing homebrew versions of discs like we do with older carts in several years once people acquire some of this equipment as it's decommissioned. This would also affect patent spaces if they aren't keeping up with manufacture (that is decades away if I remember how patent stuff works, but still). Hmm.
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Just noting it's wild we reached a point where between cartridges and optical discs that discs are the more burdensome thing to manufacture.
 
Discs were the cheaper alternative at scale definitely, but with the winding down of movie discs as well maybe they can't make enough for it to be worth it anymore.

While I have few objections to buying digital from a dependable company (and this is a very short list that does not include Sony!), this is a very worrying direction as a whole. With what little.voting power I have in my wallet, I plan to buy physical whenever possible.
 
lincolnic said:
It's a bleak moment if you believe that games are worthy of being studied and accessible for future generations.
Click to expand...

We used to think of video games as occupying a space somewhere close to movies and music and books. As it apparently turns out, they really occupy a place closer to Microsoft Teams or a web browser.
 
Software also used to occupy that space—you bought the program and/or a license and then you owned it and could do what you wanted with it. The shift to ongoing subscriptions for ephemeral contents is just a way to bilk the consumer out of more money without giving them anything more (and indeed, sometimes less).

But like software—which video games *are*—they've been teetering on the edge of a chasm with physical on one side and all-digital on the other. Or maybe they'd fallen in and were stuck at the bottom of the canyon. But patches really fucked with the concept of physical versions of games. It really came into focus with me for Elden Ring, where the version of the game printed on the disc of the physical edition, 1.0, was never seen by the vast majority of players, and was not really intended to be seen by anyone in the first place, because the day-1 patch that went out with launch made *major* changes to every aspect of the game. And that's before getting into the following year or two of patches with bug fixes, balance changes, and content additions.

And what about games like No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk 2077? Both stars of heroic comeback stories, broken trash games at launch that have since been turned around into widely beloved and critically acclaimed megahits. The physical release versions of those games are probably worthless right now; you wouldn't even *want* to play them unless as part of some history project (which, I'm all for the archival and historical preservation movements! Absolutely nothing bad to say about them).

Games used to come out and be done, but now they can continue to evolve and change beyond release. There's arguments about releasing unfinished games in the first place and finishing them over time, and I don't doubt some publishers push that. There's a lot of back-and-forth between the artistic side and the business side in the industry, along with other industrial modes of art like cinema and mass-release music... I'm getting off-track. Point is, the realities of game production as they exist today rely on digital distribution, for better or for worse (and in some cases I'd argue strongly for better—it's great that we can usually expect bug fixes from at least the bigger games, eventually). I don't know that we could ever go back to a state of pure physical delivery and distribution without making massive changes in the entire workflow pipelines for all but the smallest indie titles. The genie isn't going back in the bottle, sadly.
 
Voncaster said:
I would have thought the exact opposite. Discs have a layer of data burned or pressed in some material and then some plastic to seal it. Carts have chips and wiring; more components. Maybe switch games (flash carts?) vs PS5 discs is more competitive on price.

Historically I thought some PS1 games could sell dirt cheap compared to N64 games. Discs were way more cost efficient than carts.
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Oh I was thinking more that someone with a soldering iron and rudimentary programming could make an Atari cartridge work. I feel like the pressing of the discs and the data alignment are more difficult, but maybe I'm way off?
 
drives that burn blu-ray discs have existed for a long time but due to encryption and licensing etc. they're only really useful for data storage and transfer to my knowledge. it's not like some older systems where you can burn CDs and put them right in the tray. in principle i'm inclined to say that pressing discs is easier though, but the knowledge to make that process useful is obviously pretty heavily locked down.
 
I feel like maybe discs shouldn't be released at launch, but maybe towards the end of the life -- or at least, update -- cycle, when things are basically done.

Because the people going for physical -- besides those looking for lower prices in used games, at least -- are probably looking for a version of the game they can keep for all time and play whenever they want.

At least, that's where I'm at. For instance, I don't think they're updating Killer Instinct for Xbox anymore, so I'd like to have the "done" version of the game, so I'll know I can always go back and play it at its best and most complete.
 
I ran into a similar issue when the 3DS eshop closed. A fair number of 3DS RPGs had an absurd amount of piece meal DLC that is simply inaccessible by normal means now. You’re not going to get a “Complete” Fire Emblem: Awakening or Shin Megami Tensei 4 if you buy even an unopened physical copy these days. No Game of the Year or Definitive versions for those games in the foreseeable future, either.
 
Yeah, one of the pieces I read last week was talking about this through the lens of how the physical versions of many games now aren't the versions that people actually play due to day one patches and updates and whatnot. It's all just a giant clusterfuck circling around "you don't own the thing you buy anymore".

And, like, as someone who works in AAA, I hate this. I want the things that I've spent a decade of my life now making to be available for anyone who wants to play them, at any point in the future.
 
Voncaster said:
I feel like that is outrage they can get away with. Not that I agree with the decision. Just that I imagine the number of players on those systems has to be small.

***
Valve is not also immune to destroying the digital past. I use a 32-bit Mac for internet. I have a handful of steam games 10-20. When apple upgraded to 64-bit operating system, Steam changed and half my games became unplayable. I think it has to do with old games being designed for old architecture and when new architecture comes along old games cease to work unless work is put into them to modernize them.
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I have a lot of problems with Valve, but it's not on them that Apple goes out of its way to keep new computers from running old software at pretty regular intervals. Apple just sucks that way, and it's on developers to maybe patch in compatibility for new hardware (they might if you ask, even!)
 
I’m letdown with this but I also feel really sorry for anyone who bought the external disc drive for the PS5 Pro or Slim expecting to keep a generations worth of game releases. I think this would sting a lot less if they made this decision with a PS6 rather than just abruptly cutting off games out of nowhere.

Fwiw, I genuinely am sad to see physical games go on PlayStation so I don’t support this at all.
 
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