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

Posted by Tiberium 19 hours ago

Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation(blog.playstation.com)

699 points | 693 commentspage 11

snarfy 17 hours ago|

If they are going digital only then they are competing with Steam. They will lose.

avaer 17 hours ago|

They aren't competing with Steam. The console market is a closed cabal where console makers sell the machine at a loss and make up for it with locked down software where publishers pay a significant proportion of the sales to the console maker, who controls supply and dealflow with private contracts.

They might lose, but it's nothing like PC.

animal_spirits 13 hours ago||

I think this is good. We don't need more e-waste for disks that get used for a year and thrown away. The games can live on a tiny hard disk that takes a fraction of the resources to produce.

junon 13 hours ago|

Not really. If the services that grant you access to your own hard disk ever go under, you lose it. You do not have access to the files. You're effectively paying for a licence to play the game for a finite amount of time, for the same (if not higher) price that physical media used to cost.

thraway3837 12 hours ago||

I'm not sad about physical disc production ending, since a lot of those games already required a constant internet connection to play (check DRM status).

What upsets me more is removing games from the library that people have already bought. Or, not having a unified store strategy where games can still be downloaded if supported on that device. Much like Apple's App Store.

If compared to an iPhone/Apple, Sony takes the cellular carrier approach: tightly integrating the game developers to the platform and the platform can remove that game at any time because the "contract expired".

That is disgusting.

You can still download games onto the latest devices from ages ago on the Apple App Stores, as long as you performed some minor binary updates with a newer Xcode. That's it.

ai_ja_nai 17 hours ago||

what will happen when in 10 years they will want to discontinue those games? will they be hosting them forever? how are we going to preserve all the videogames production from 2028 on?

explosionpunch 16 hours ago|

The unfortunate thing is that there actually already is a government mechanism for this, in the US at least, but it's been lobbied against by the industry [0]. So like, there already is a way to do this, the same way that libraries are allowed to preserve copies of every book, but the video game industry blocks it from happening.

[0] https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/u-s-copyright-office-...

koeliga 18 hours ago||

So this pretty much confirms that GTA 6 won't be sold as disc later on

Imustaskforhelp 18 hours ago|

Oh man, I had forgotten about GTA 6 releasing on Playstation earlier than PC's. So all the hype around GTA 6 and the fact that people have been waiting for so long would drive up the demand of newer playstations and with all the 4 changes that I talked about in one of my other comments[0]

> No physical disc + shutting down online stores + deleting movies from customers accounts + dynamic pricing.

This basically becomes a sunk cost fallacy, both in buying the games or subscription models.

Because there are people who want a game so badly and want to play on release date and that game has partnered up with a console company that they will only release (first) on some consoles with the 4 factors discussed above. It leads to an incredible sunk-cost fallacy which somewhat capitalizes on the fact of the hype of the game and they are looking for any and every ways to capitalize on it for as long as possible.

I imagine some Playstation subscription yearly discount might also happen near the launch of GTA 6 so that they could tie users up to an yearly subscription perhaps.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48746439

Imustaskforhelp 18 hours ago||

So physical disc production is ending for new games on Playstation.

At the same time, as @outervale has said: they are shutting down PS3 and PS Vita online stores as well.

AND at the same time as @zache has said & previous discussions about PlayStation Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts.

WHILE at the same time, Dynamic pricing[0] is occuring where people who buy games are charged more because PS expects them to be able to cough up more money from my understanding

Combining all of this: No physical disc + shutting down online stores + deleting movies from customers accounts + dynamic pricing.

These might basically just be planned obsolence devices while trying to extract as much profits as humanly possible from your wallets.

I remember the dynamic pricing debate and that some people were somewhat tolerable of that, but I think that being tolerable of that is what is causing more and more precedents and an overall situation has occur where things are just increasingly more actively consumer-hostile.

[0]: https://www.ign.com/articles/sony-reportedly-testing-dynamic...

self_awareness 12 hours ago||

Well, if people would prefer physical discs over digital distribution and would insist of having a proof of ownership, I guess Sony wouldn't have a choice but to prefer physical distribution.

But since customers don't care, who else should care?

I always prefered physical disks. That was my #1 pro-console argument. Without those disks, I simply won't buy anything console related. I vote with my wallet, simple as that.

Of course I know that people will still buy digital disks and then cry when Sony will do something unthinkable like revoking access, but I guess that won't be my problem.

complianceowll 14 hours ago||

Modernity, ladies and gentlemen.

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