PlayStation has acknowledged that its recent announcement about ending physical game production has been controversial, but says it will move forward with these plans nonetheless.
In an investor Q&A for its latest quarterly earnings release, Sony was asked about its decision to stop selling disc-based games in January 2028. Speaking through an interpreter, chief financial officer Lin Tao said Sony “put in a lot of thought and time” before deciding to “cautiously move this forward.” She also admitted that Sony has “received various opinions and people have strong views, and we understand that the community has put forth those views to us.”
Notably, this is the first time that Sony has publicly addressed the outcry. After announcing the news on July 1, PlayStation’s official social media channels went dark for several days. This led upset fans to bombard other Sony brand posts, including those about Spider-Man: Brand New Day, with their criticism. Even when PlayStation resumed social media posts about games like September’s Marvel’s Wolverine, it was met with countless comments pushing back against the plans to axe physical games. Amid all of this blowback, PlayStation employees were even given stricter-than-ever guidelines for how they could respond publicly, according to former PlayStation developer Alanah Pearce.
In the investor call, Tao said PlayStation recognizes why fans are upset, given that games are “a form of entertainment that’s loved by people, and it’s connected to people’s fond memories” over the years. “And so we understand those emotions. We want to consider that,” she added. “And in the future digital ecosystem, how do we engage the gamers is something that we would like to continue to explore.”
It remains to be seen what, exactly, PlayStation means by that. It’s worth mentioning that the company has been selling a disc drive accessory for PS5 models that lack this built-in functionality, although there’s no indication that it would offer something similar for future hardware, including the inevitable PS6.
There are many reasons why the killing of physical media is damaging to the future of the gaming industry, from a preservation standpoint to allowing more affordable options for consumers. But alas, PlayStation is going to press on regardless, and this unfortunately isn’t surprising. The reality is that the vast majority of game sales are now digital, and companies profit more off of them than from physical media because they cut out revenue shares with retailers as well as disc and case manufacturing costs.
And despite companies making more money from digital purchases, they historically haven’t passed on any of those savings to the consumer. Ironically, Nintendo was the first major company to do this in May when it started charging less for digital games vs. their physical counterparts.
But while there is a sadly sound logic in ditching physical media, Tao went on to make some other questionable statements in the Q&A. When addressing the wider future of PlayStation, she argued that one of the key ways PlayStation will continue to differentiate itself is by being more affordable than high-end gaming PCs. While it’s true that consoles have historically been popular due to them being cheaper and easier to use than PCs, rising hardware costs have significantly closed that gap.
Following an April price hike, a standard PS5 is $819.99 in Canada, with the higher-end PS5 Pro costing a whopping $1,099.99. Therefore, it stands to reason that the PS6 — which is expected to launch in 2028 after the end of PlayStation disc production — will cost well over $1,000. At that point, you’re hardly saving compared to a high-end PC which, in the long-term, would be a better investment for a variety of reasons, including its modularity and wider pool of games not tied to a specific closed ecosystem.
It remains to be seen how PlayStation expects to weather all of this with the PS6.
Image credit: PlayStation
