Cody Spencer, co-owner of small game retailer Pink Gorilla Games, put it best when I asked about the impact of Sony’s recent announcement that it will stop making new game discs starting in January 2028. “It’s sad to see. This decision is only bad for gamers. We’re losing the ability to sell games, have games, and have games.”
Sony’s announcement was sad news for many in the gaming industry. Not only gamers, but also groups like independent shops and preservationists are trying to make games more accessible.
“This is sad news for those who still prefer to buy games on social media, and certainly a significant blow to the rights of consumers, the resale market, and game creators whose businesses rely on the virtual market,” said Frank Cifaldi, executive director of the Video Game History Foundation, in a statement.
Boutique publishers are also buzzing about the PlayStation announcement. “We are deeply disappointed by Sony’s decision to stop production of physical games in 2028,” iam8bit said in a statement. “Portable gaming is critical to gaming preservation, ownership, and consumer choice, values that have guided iam8bit since our first release in 2016. Our commitment to these values remains the same. Portable media is live.” Lost in Cult, in its own statement, says it intends to “do everything in our power to preserve video games as best we can and will continue to do so for as long as possible.”
But the move is hardly unexpected. For a long time now, video game sales have primarily been digital – just look at Capcom saying that 93 percent of its game sales were digital in its last fiscal year. Still, it’s disappointing for people who want to have games in a tangible form rather than data on a hard drive.
The truth is, despite the whining, things won’t be different for most people right away. “Physical sales of new PlayStation 5 games have been declining for a long time,” Spencer said. “So just after going digital I don’t think we’re going to see much change.”
In five to 10 years, Spencer expects to see “increasing amounts of physical titles printed before 2028 and strong demand for our products.” While that is good for business, “I personally would rather not have it [that] so be it.”
Even down the road, “the very concept of physical video games is going to be out there and seen as something new, which isn’t going to be good at all,” Spencer said. “Our kind of store can be seen as a record store. It’s a place for a lot of music fans rather than a place where everyone goes.”
Sony has been focusing on a possible digital-only future for a while now. The PS5, after all, launched in 2020 with a cheaper version without a disc drive, and the PS5 Pro requires the purchase of a separate disc drive if you want to play physical games at all. And this generation isn’t even the first time Sony has introduced digital-only hardware; The 2009 PSP Go handheld didn’t 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, and they’re not unique to the video game industry,” Borman said, pointing to things like the internet connection required, game patches being common, and “a large part of the game development process that happens using only digital tools.” But he says “it is important that we take action now to preserve the history of this industry.”
Borman says there will always be a market for used and new games, pointing to the resurgence of vinyl records. But losing the option of physical PlayStation games still stings. “From a consumer’s perspective, choice is an issue, and losing that choice is unfortunate, especially for those who may not have reliable or fast Internet connections — or who just want to feel a sense of ownership over their purchases,” Borman said.
Cifaldi says the change will not have “as big an impact as you might expect” on the work of professional conservationists. “The reality is that this continues to be a trend,” Cifaldi said in a slightly different version of the posted statement The Verge. “The Sony PlayStation is not the first to do this and it will not be the last, as most of the video games produced in the last twenty years were not made for home video game consoles, let alone the pressure of communication. We have been preparing for this future for some time, we expect that putting discs on the shelf will not be a long-term solution for keeping new games.”
It is worth noting that the platform owners do others saved to make their old games available to play. Sony has an IP Preservation team, Microsoft has made a number of older games playable on modern Xbox hardware thanks to the retro system, and Nintendo Switch Online’s retro catalog is full of classics, including titles as recent as the GameCube era.
GTA VIwill be sold in physical stores but only as a download code in the box, it is probably a preview of what is to come. Since it won’t be sold on disc, you can’t sell the game, lend it to a friend, or get a cheap used copy for a fraction of the $79.99 price. People can tolerate that GTA VIone of the greatest games of all time, but it wouldn’t sound right if it was the experience of every video game box on the store shelf.
Cifaldi is asking trade groups like the Entertainment Software Association, which has opposed conservation efforts in the past, to “provide reasonable 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, because they expect museums to download a copy Grand Theft Auto VI and I hope it will work in 50 years it is not a conservation solution.”
