ITS OVER Sony Interactive Entertainment to end physical game disc production in January 2028

[EricHiggin]

Jizz_Beard_thePirate said:

The removal of physical discs is such a short sighted decision that I am still perplexed as to how the clowns at Sony that are making these decisions are still employed. It wasn't enough to lose 100s of millions on their live service fetish which resulted in tons of lay offs and studio closures, price increases and etc. But now they are going to go forward with removing physical games that is royally pissing off their fanbase.

What they really don't realize however is how much damage this is going to do to Playstation long term. In the past, you have had many reasons as to why someone would choose a Playstation over PC. Things like exclusives, physical media, being able to pick up and play, having the living room experience with UI and controller inputs, lower up front cost and etc.

These days however, the reasons to get a Playstation over PC has been continuously decreasing and in fact, reasons to get a PC over consoles have been continuously increasing. Exclusives outside of first party are virtually non-existent. Valve has been developing SteamOS to bring the living room experience to PCs for many years now in order to merge the gap between the PC experience and console experience. Playstation has lower up front cost but it also has a fee for online and cloud saves while Steam does not. Steam also has better sales, better customer support and refund system as well as many other features like family sharing all for free. On top of that, you aren't locked to Steam on PC for games purchasing and sites like GMG and Fanatical gives pre-order discounts of 15-20% for most major titles. Essentially having multiple store fronts also allows for tons of competitive pricing and sales which is what we have seen many times for Physical games.

So what I am getting at is, Sony is essentially knocking out another reason that differentiated Playstation vs PC. Millions of people buy consoles for physical media whether it be using it to play physical games or watching bluray movies on it. Physical media itself is a form of exclusivity that PCs cannot do. And by getting rid of it, they are giving another reason for gamers to buy a PC and ultimately getting rid of what made console experience so unique.

Yup. It's the main reason they're dropping PC ports. If they kept putting PS Studio games on PC, there would be a mad rush for gamers to jump to PC by next gen. SNY had no choice but to go back to console exclusivity to force everyone to remain locked into PS(6) hardware ecosystem going forward.

How many will still abandon PS regardless come next gen will be interesting to see. Possibly sad to see. Even more interesting, may be if Helix can thread the PC-console hybrid needle and those PS gamers go to XB hardware instead of direct to PC next gen.