Sony says that only 3% of their revenue is from physical games (It's more like 4.7%). What they aren't accounting for is that much of that digital revenue is tied to phyiscal purchases. That digital DLC I bought for Elden Ring? Wouldn't have happened without the physical purchase. All those Indie purchases? Wouldn't happen if I never bought a PS5 for physical games. Intermittent PS Plus subs? You can kiss that revenue goodbye too! There's a whole lot more than 3% of revenue (or 15% of games) being at stake here. Sony stands to lose 20%-30% of their revenue by shutting out physical gamers. 

It's a very strange response for a store to refuse to sell GTA6 at their store in protest, when that is literally what Rockstar wants.

This announcement made me not want to buy anymore PS4 or PS5 games. Even if they reverse course (which I doubt) I still won't buy anymore PS4/PS5 games. I'll just stick with PC, Xbox Series X and Switch 2 for modern gaming.

I always buy my games physically for console and sometimes digitally if the price is right (mostly handhelds) and I love collecting retro. After I get the last remaining games for my PS3 from the PS Store before it closes I'm done with modern Playstation. I'll just stick with my good old retro PS consoles.

It's very undestanstadable to be mad at Sony, which I am so, so very much.

But if you buy most games physically, as I do, how is going to PC, a platform as close to 100% digital as possible, or sticking with Series X, where most Microsoft own games come incomplete or entirely missing aside from a key to download on the disc, be much better?

Playstation was the last place where having a big physical collection made sense, most Switch 2 games are mostly an empty plastic case with a download key as well.

Sure, there will still be some physical games outside of Playstation, mostly Nintendo first party games tho, but Sony is pretty much killing physical gaming aside from Nintendo first party games, there is nowhere to run to solve it, sadly.

PC is different where you can actually own your game digitally. I love physical, but digital ownership is also just as important. Also on PC you're not locked to one store to buy your games you have key sites, digital stores like Steam and GOG, and DRM free sites. You also have the ability if you wish to burn games to a disc. You can pirate / emulate games and actually own them. There are a lot of Xbox games that are fully on disc that I think a lot of people underestimate. Playstation has more yes, but Xbox has a good chunk.

I know over half Switch 2 physical games are key cards, but there's still a good chunk on card and there's more to come. The gap between key cards and regular cards shrunk, so we're getting close to that 50/50. When there's a Switch 2 game that's a key card, but it's also on Switch 1 I just get the Switch 1 version such as Octopath 0, Dragon Quest 1&2 HD, etc.

If a game I want isn't physically on disc/cart I just get on PC. Digital ownership is more important now than ever and I think everyone needs to fight for that on consoles since we're going to that all digital future.

PC is great because once a game is available there it hardly will be completely lost as people will preserve it one way or another. But as far as actual ownership goes GoG is there for it, I wish it was more successful. Steam have DRM free games but the ratio must be very small. It does have them tho, yes. None of it solves actual physical onwership tho.

Good to know more NS2 games are getting actual physical releases, recently I got to know even some games like Indiana Jones which only has an incomplete disc version on XBS/PS5 got an actual complete release on cart. But it's still far from optimal, at least it does have a big GKC disclaimer in the front so we can avoid it easily.

This!

Also if a game was somehow on Xbox physically and fully on disc, but got released after 2028, I would buy an Xbox just to have a physical DRM-Free copy of that game. 

But for the most part this is the end for physical-gamers. Aside from Nintendo 1st party and a handful of 3rd party Switch 2 games there's not going to be anymore physical games. :(

The main advantage PC has is that most games are either DRM-free or easily cracked. The exception are Denuvo titles, but usually after half a year they are cracked too. So if the goal is to have longevity of purchase and physical backups, PC is the easiest platform to do it. Of course it doesn't solve resale or collector objections to moving to digital, or the issue people in developing countries/regions might have with internet speeds, but it solves the longevity problem much better than physical with DRM ever did as you can backup updated versions and have multiple backups, making it redundant to the media breaking or failing. From an archivist perspective, PC is the best platform.

I would like to also mention backwards compatibility. It's basically guaranteed on PC, whereas on consoles you're at the mercy of the console manufacturer. At the moment it's looking pretty good in this regard on PlayStation (although only if you've bought digital), but each generation is still a risk, and Sony has clearly demonstrated several times in the past that backwards compatibility is not all that important for them if it gets in the way of other things. Some of us won't care about this, but some of us do. Personally I have a huge backlog, and I might play some games 10-20+ years after release, so this does matter to me.

A physical disc lasts over 100 years when properly stored.