Not that I trust this to be true, but it would be awesome if it was. A digital-only PS6 is a product I will not buy. But if they reverse course I will reconsider my position. I do like Sony's games, and I'd hate to miss them, but I'm not sinking large sums of money into an ecosystem where I don't own my games.

Seriously, though. Sony had to have known there would be massive blowback. While physical sales have slowed, it's not to the degree in which they've framed it. Last fiscal year they still sold 70M physical games. Yes, that's down a good bit from where it was at this point in the PS4's life cycle, but it's not small potatoes, either. It's not like CDs, which dropped over 90% in the U.S. between 2000 and 2019. But even then, the music industry didn't tell people to either download mp3s/get streaming subscriptions or go kick rocks. Anyone can make a CD player or record player. It's an open platform. And most music is on multiple digital platforms, too. Nobody has a monopoly on where you can buy, say, The White Album, Moving Pictures, Pyromania, Nevermind, or The Chronic (I'm old; sue me), and what you can play them on.

Consoles are closed ecosystems, though, and Sony felt they could just force everyone to switch to digital and only buy directly from the walled garden that is the PS Store and everything would just go hunky-dory with all their customers and everyone would just shrug their shoulders and go "Oh, well." Well, they thought wrong. I have a lot of physical games between the past two generations of Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch. I'd have even more if I had more money. I even bought some games physically after playing them digitally through GP (which I always treated as a "try before you buy," kinda like renting a game or movie from Blockbuster or waiting to watch a movie on streaming if I wasn't sure on it, and if I like it enough I buy it physically). Like, I bought Ori and the Blind Forest on disc because I really liked it, and I'm picking up the physical versions of Hollow Knight and Silksong that are coming later this year. I also held out on playing Sonic Mania in the hopes that a physical version would release, and lo and behold I got my wish. In the past decade I think the only digital game I paid actual money for was Blaster Master Zero at the Switch's launch.

Rumors will rumor. Hoping XBox takes full advantage of the opening.

Xbox is turning into PC (digital only). As a matter of fact it already kind of happened with the ROG Xbox Ally, and Asha just confirmed that Helix is a "family of devices". They'll be branded PC's. For existing consoles, Persona 6 is confirmed to only offer physical on PS5 and not on Xbox.

MS will take advantage of Sony's mess by also going fully digital and saying "Hey, don't be mad at us, Sony did it first!!"

Best case scenario is that they offer an add-on for backwards compatibility.

If it is a PC, Boutique labels will still be able to release physical games for it on DVD for instance.