Man, this is such bad timing. Less than a week ago, Sony announced that in parts of Europe it plans to remove previously purchased digital content from Studio Canal; that the digital content someone paid for will simply disappear from their library. And now the company has announced an all-digital future?

I was already bearish on future PlayStation consoles — Sony's first-party content is weaker than it's ever been and those third-party exclusives that buoyed the brand previously have gone multi-platform — so this just makes a likely divestment from the PlayStation ecosystem even more likely.

Considering the current state of the home console space (rising hardware prices) this seems like an inopportune time to be rocking the boat like this. I think it will cost them but be hidden in the rising prices bucket. I may buy the PS6, but if I do, it will be a used piece of hardware like I did with the PS4 Pro and PS5.

The timing is strange from a business standpoint. What made Sony think going public with this information today was a good move?

Terrible news.

1. This pretty much forces you to buy games on their store. No more retailers deals: launch games will be 70-80 dollars DIGITAL like it or not.

2. No more second hand market. Selling your old games to buy new ones will be no more. Buying used games for less money is over.

3. You own nothing. You will only own digital licenses that can be revoked at any time. If this happens, say goodbye to "your" game.

4. Backwards compatibility will potentially be compromised for those who have a physical collection unless the make the disk drive compatible with PS6 (I doubt they will do this).

No matter how you look at this: the consumer will lose big time, specially when the other big publishers and console manufacturers follow suit. Xbox will probably release a similar statement soon. Nintendo will take longer to give in, but if all the others do it, they will too in the future.

That's when I'll be out of this. Once Nintendo goes full digital, I'll go full indie/retro.

I think most of the things we see happening in the gaming industry now with mass layoffs, studio closures, downsizing publishers, death of physical games, higher game prices etc is all about gaming companies positioning themselves for the coming, very likely contraction in core gaming (PC, console) user base numbers the coming years. I think they see the future being about much fewer potential consumers, but being able to monetize that user base much more effectively in the future through higher game prices, all digital sales, higher subscription prices, higher accessory prices etc.

Retail will continue, but digital only. Reason for retail to continue is make sure there is 'competition' or else legislators are going to force Sony to put other digital stores onto the PS5/6. Look at what happened with Apple.

No resell or sharing games with friends puts a perspective on game pricing. Don't mind to spend 70 if I can trade it in if necessary or swap with a friend. Else it's 40 max.

Crazy that their PR speech says the consumers made this happen acting like both Sony and Microsoft weren’t pulling the strings all along. I hope when this happens they start yanking digital licenses left and right and start showing an iron fist. If I have to suffer due to dumb consumers “choice” I hope they do too.

I honestly think Sony was empowered by the astronomical pre-sales of Grand Theft Auto VI. And it wanted to rip off the band-aid.

85% of full game downloads were digital on the PS Store in Q4 FY 2025. HOWEVER...

Only 69% of games that came as a physical copy were true physical copies with the full game on the disk. People that prefer physical games absolutely will not buy something that is a code on a disk. That pushes the digital sales ratio for those games higher than it would naturally be. And out of those, many had severely restricted physical releases that required a lengthy pre-order and wait from a company like Limited Run Games. Many people would prefer to just buy an Indie game digitally than buy it physically if the wait is so damn long. If they put Indie games in stores or made it less of a wait then people would buy more physical games. In other words Sony and other big corporations have been putting their thumb on the physical vs digital ratio scale for a decade. Then they go ahead and claim "consumers have chosen digital", when it's often flat out not a choice. If you release a game with only 100,000 physical copies and it's not immediately available in stores, then yeah people are going to buy a digital copy. If you release a game as a 1 MB stub that calls home to the internet then yeah, people that don't like digital games won't buy that physical copy either.

TL/DR: If games were readily available in stores with REAL physical copies the ratio of digital to physical would be much more in physical's favor. Sony rigged the results in their own interest.

Yeah, that absolutely was it. Also at least Sony held off for this long. Microsoft has been slowly killing physical with fake physical releases for over a decade now. At least up until this point Sony games were complete on the disc and not 1MB stubs that required an internet connection.