When I asked about the impact of Sony’s recent announcement that it will stop making discs for new games starting in January 2028, Cody Spencer, co-owner of small game retail chain Pink Gorilla Games, said it well. “It’s sad to see. This decision is only negative for gamers. We’re losing the ability to sell games, share games, and own games.”
Sony’s announcement has been devastating news for many in the games industry. Not only players, but also groups such as independent retail stores and preservationists strive to make gaming more accessible.
Frank Cifaldi, executive director of the Video Game History Foundation, said in a statement, “This is unfortunate news for those who still prefer to purchase games on physical media, and certainly a significant hit to consumer rights, the resale market, and game makers whose businesses depend on the physical market.”
Boutique publishers are also mourning PlayStation’s announcement. “We are extremely disappointed by Sony’s decision to suspend production of physical games in 2028,” iam8bit said in a statement. “Physical games are vital to game preservation, ownership and consumer choice, values that have guided iam8bit since our first physical release in 2016. Our commitment to these values remains unchanged. Long live physical media.” Lost in Cult has said in its own statement that it aims to “do everything in our power to preserve video games to the best of our ability and will continue to do so for as long as we can.”
But this move is not at all unexpected. For a long time now, video game sales have been primarily digital – see Capcom saying that 93 percent of its game sales were digital last fiscal year. Still, this is disappointing for those who want to keep games as something more tangible than data on a hard drive.
The reality is that, despite the outrage, things aren’t going to be any different immediately for most people. “Physical sales of new PlayStation 5 games have been declining for some time,” says Spencer. “So immediately after the switch to digital I don’t think we’ll see much change.”
In five to 10 years, Spencer expects “prices for physical titles printed before 2028 will increase and there will be a niche but strong demand for our products.” Although it’s good for business, “I personally wouldn’t want to do that [that] Be the case.”
Going forward, Spencer says, “the very idea of physical video games will become foreign and will be seen as a novelty, which will not be good for us at all.” “Our type of store can be seen more like a record store. It’s largely a place for the most passionate fans of the medium rather than a place where everyone goes.”
Sony has been moving towards a possible digital-future for some time now. After all, the PS5 launched in 2020 with a cheaper version without a disc drive, and the PS5 Pro requires a separate disc drive purchase if you want to play physical games. And this generation isn’t even the first time Sony has launched digital-only hardware; The 2009 PSP Go handheld did not have a UMD drive, Andrew Borman, director of digital preservation at The Strong National Museum of Play, reminded me.
“The challenges of digital preservation are not new”
“The challenges of digital preservation are not new, nor are they specific to the video game industry,” says Borman, noting the required online connectivity, frequent game patches, and “much of the game development process taking place using only digital tools.” But he says “it is vital that we act now to preserve the history of the industry.”
Pointing to the resurgence of vinyl records, Borman says there will always be a market for used and new physical games. But losing the option of physical PlayStation games still stings. “From a consumer perspective, choice matters, and losing that choice is unfortunate, especially for those who don’t have a reliable or fast Internet connection — or simply like to feel ownership over their purchases,” Borman says.
Cifaldi says the change “will not have as much impact on the work of professional conservationists as you might expect”. “The reality is that this continues to be a trend,” Cifaldi said in a slightly different version of the statement sent. The Verge. “Sony PlayStation is not the first to do this nor will they be the last, as most video games produced over the past two decades were not created for dedicated home video game consoles, let alone pressed onto physical media. And even when they were released on physical media, they were guaranteed to have a day one digital patch, meaning that even if a disc is preserving the data in an accessible way, it may not represent the games that people have actually played. Museums like ours and Archives have been preparing for this future for some time. The hope is that keeping discs on the shelf will not be a long-term solution to preserving new games.
It is worth paying attention to what the platform holders are doing Some? Preservation to make their old games available to play. Sony has an IP preservation team, Microsoft has made many older games playable on modern Xbox hardware thanks to a backward compatibility program, and the Nintendo Switch Online retro catalog is full of classics, including recent titles from the GameCube era.
GTA VIWhich will be sold in physical stores but only as a download code in a box, presumably a preview of what is to come. Since it won’t be sold on disc, you can’t sell the game, borrow it from a friend, or get a cheap used copy for a fraction of the $79.99 price. Maybe people are ready for this GTA VIOne of the greatest games ever made, but it wouldn’t feel as good if it was the experience for every video game box on the shelf in a store.
Cifaldi is calling on trade groups such as the Entertainment Software Association, which have opposed preservation efforts in the past, to “provide meaningful solutions for archives and museums to legally preserve digital-only content and make it accessible for research.” Cifaldi says the industry “needs to come to the table on this issue in a meaningful way, because museums are expected to download a copy of it.” grand theft auto vi And expecting it to last in 50 years is not a conservation solution.”
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