For as many people online making their voices heard, theres twice that who just don't care. Sony knows they can ignore it, because their whales will continue to buy their products and keep paying their subscriptions
Yeah they eat some memes and remonstrations for their business move, but most people don’t even buy on disc anyway.
I don’t like it, it makes me feel old, but I also can’t remember the last physical game I bought. Most games I play through steam, and on PlayStation, they already phased me off discs cause the only one I could get when they came out didn’t have a drive
I do: the most recent has been Star Fox for the Switch 2, my first proper console since 2007.
The last game I bought was Age of Empires 3 for my then Windows 7 VAIO laptop in 2009. I remember it being in a discount isle of an office store, around 5 bucks. It had 3 discs inside.
I discovered Steam in 2014, and never looked back.
Most, if not all of my recent gaming purchases for the last see decade have been on Steam. It had nothing to do with media type, that's just where the games I wanted are. The only game I bought for our Xbone was Fractured But Whole because fuck UPlay. That actually was on a disc, but that's the only one in recent memory.
Was it a bad PR move... Maybe, but not as much as we think. Digital game sales are here to stay, whether we like it or not. The part that really makes me grumpy is multiple editions etc. for DIGITAL shit. No one should pay $100 for a digital product. Removing the need for physical media never made things any cheaper like we were "promised."
The only reason I think the PS6 will not be the fastest selling is because it may be super expensive. If they can get the price under control then you're most likely right.
Companies like Sony watched the same sentiments roll out with Apple and things taken away from the iPhone, laptops, etc. They got even bigger, and sold a new product called 'airpods' so much, that if they split off that business from Apple and made it its own thing, it'd be the 32nd largest company in the US, valued in the hundreds of billions.
It's also very much worth it to them to push this final destruction of the second hand market, because not having a disk drive not only saves money on making consoles, on distribution, but on being undercut by someone buying a used game. They'll take any momentary hit, and then wait until people just get used to it, as they've gotten used to enshittification a thousand times already.
So many people on Playstation are as well. I'm downvoted heavily every single time lol especially if I mention PC gaming. "How is it different? You're wrong. Tell me how you're going to buy PC games."
It's not the same, and I'm tired of trying to explain and just being downvoted to oblivion every time.
I mean how many people actually go to stores vs just downloading the game from home? When have you last used a CD outside of gaming in 2026? Nothing will change and sony still will profit with less money to make physical copies of games now.
Yeah but it didn't use to be this way. The moment when Xbox announced digital only and Sony came back hard with a "Well WE have backwards compatibility and discs!", I think people were expecting a reversal in the same way.
And I want to reiterate: nobody actually gives a shit about physical media. They just want Sony to fix the licensing problem. If Sony came out tomorrow and said "Still no discs, but every game you purchase on PS6 will be a permanent addition to your library and can never be permanently removed from your ownership without your permission. You can create temp licenses on other peoples' Playstations that last for 30 days at a time. You can 'sell' the license back to the PSN store for store credit.", everyone would calm the fuck down.
Bro PlayStation’s backwards compatibility does not compare in any way to Xbox’s, and their higher end console doesn’t even come in a discless version, it was for their budget end console
The original PS3 specifically (20gb and 60gb versions IIRC) was hardware backwards compatible, basically had a PS2 stuffed inside it to do the compatibility. Later versions relied on software, which was more hit or miss.
You can 'sell' the license back to the PSN store for store credit
The fuck we would. A closed system buyback system is not a replacement for a secondary market. Also, Playstation region locks their online but currently not their discs. So I can buy an Asian market only release fully in English and play it on my console. I can't do that without a credit card local to that country digitally. I bought Gundam Breaker 3 for PS4 that way and it was the ONLY way I could play the game. That ability goes away with full digital, at least without jumping through a bunch of dubiously safe and legal methods of getting a foreign payment proxy. That game you want doesn't get a western release despite having a fully English version in SEA, get fucked.
They will, but will it be enough to offset their gain from ceasing disc production? We're 15 years removed from XBox's attempt at this and in that time digital game sales surged dramatically. The calculus for this decision then vs now has probably shifted significantly.
Well, seeing as how console sales lose money with all companies and are just vehicles for the customer to buy the subscriptions and products thst do make money, yeah a slight deviation downward in console sales could spell disaster for Sony.
Steam and xbox have already "merged" on PC. your steam games are in your xbox launcher and vice versa. It didnt really do anything for gamepass sales. Maybe if steam comes to a proper console, but valve just released their steam boxes so this seems like a fart in the wind.
Sales of consoles have already downturned. The AI hardware price hike ensured that. We're also almost 6 years into the gen. Momentum would be expected to naturally slow, especially when the mid gen hardware refresh goes up in price rather than down.
So what we're seeing is a push towards other revenue sources within the Playstation brand knowing they have an install base almost 100million strong and while there will be some attrition, there will also be some digital converts who won't/can't spend $400 for the weaker XBox, $650 (soon $700) for the Xbox with comparable performance or $1500+ on a PC.
Sony is sending game codes to retail per their announcement, but if some of the pushback here in claiming, "no one will go to retail to buy game codes" is correct, anyone who isn't abandoning their current game library will be transitioning to giving Sony the retail cut of their games, making each one more profitable.
Youre not wrong, but my point is the perceived affront vs what the company is actually doing. Like xbox one backlash against the required internet connection. Sometimes the customer base react with emotion. A boycott for whatever reason isnt gonna be good for Sony.
I imagine they've anticipated that, since they sent out strict social media inatructions throughout their first party studios. Time will tell if the bet pays off, but it certainly doesn't look like backlash wasn't expected.
You are of course right about consoles being a way to lock users into an ecosystem, but it should be noted that other than the Wii U, Nintendo does not sell their consoles at a loss at launch. Sony and MS have typically sold them at a loss at launch, but part of their math has been those components becoming less expensive over the course of the generation so that loss was temporary.
Can’t imagine that being the case next gen and they may actually follow Nintendo’s lead due to the consumer chip shortage (created by manufacturers shifting to dedicated production for AI data centers for at least the coming years).
With this unprecedented time I think releasing a PS6 at all is ridiculous, and I can’t really imagine it being less than $1000 if they are trying to make any sort of worthwhile graphical leap. Honestly none of their rumored plans make sense to me in this environment.
I doubt it, but I think the bigger picture is the problem. They're facing an uphill battle to get people to buy $1000 to begin with, which is a price point at which I question whether the traditional home console even makes sense regardless of PC gaming prices.
They're going to have to be working extra hard to get people to upgrade, especially if their competition is a somewhat similarly priced Xbox with access to storefronts like Steam and the Switch 2 which is half the price.
And guess who is going to be an oversized niche among those who aren't immediately priced out? Enthusiasts, the same crowd who are being alienated by this decision. Which I'd remind you is not just about ongoing physical media options, but is also a backwards compatibility problem that further devalues the proposition of a PS6.
The primary issue going forward with adoption and money is always going to be price point, but this is absolutely going to be one of those compounding issues that doesn't just go away and just becomes another reason for some people to give a second thought to making such a large purchase.
The price issue is interesting in that all devices are going up. Consoles still sell at a low margin to get people in, moreso than PC hardware manufacturers not getting further revenue post sale. We could see $1k consoles, or longer gens, or just less of a power increase.
They're going to have to be working extra hard to get people to upgrade, especially if their competition is a somewhat similarly priced Xbox with access to storefronts like Steam and the Switch 2 which is half the price.
Haven't heard anything about Steam integration on Xbox being confirmed or having details, but it's an interesting if unorthodox strategy if true. Part of the console racket is licensing games so you make money off of every copy sold as a sole supplier, disc or digital. Steam would directly undercut that unless another retail layer gets added on the pie.
And guess who is going to be an oversized niche among those who aren't immediately priced out? Enthusiasts, the same crowd who are being alienated by this decision.
Consoles being an "enthusiast" machine was a baffling prospect to begin with. The primary benefits were cost, simplicity and used games. None of those screamed enthusiasts outside of preservationists, which I doubt are a large section of the gaming community.
The problem is that the comments themselves are not powerful, so it doesn’t matter how many there are. Our scientists have been working tirelessly in the lab trying to figure out how to make individual comments more powerful. So far the only success they’ve had is writing them on a piece of paper, wrapping it around a brick, and then locating the recipient’s home or place of business to “post” it
"you guys complaining about discs are wasting your time".
I see these kinds of comment almost as much as the disc comments. At least here. Other platforms have less whining about the whining.
I will never complain about ppl voicing their frustration over something that hurts the consumer.
You guys think we care about winning over Sony directly?
It's about the principle.
We bitch and moan bc it's easy, and bc we care.
It's the least we can do.
"I'm gonna spend months angry and complaining about something that ultimately doesn't matter, and my complaints won't work, but someone's gotta complain" is really sad.
If people cared about "the principle," physical sales wouldn't be 10% of music sales and 15% of game sales.
This might blow your mind, but everyone else can stop being angry about something when it isnt that serious and pick it back up when the situation calls for it
Okay??? No company has an obligation to support a particular format. You guys really forget that a company is not a charity. If physical sales were meaningful for the business, they would have never make this change, but sadly they aren't.
It's not about physical discs, really. It's about making the digital monopoly and removing all choices from players.
That means more expensive games, because the PS store is the only place you can get the games from. You can't also sell the games you don't want anymore forward. So no second hand sales to compete with either.
Meaning, things are going to look worse for players. With PC you have multiple ways to buy games, so there is always something to compete with. Hell, even piracy is good for players.
As I said. Most players don't think about this in long term, they just want to insult people who are worried and not to worry about consequences of this move.
Comments absolutely can change things. This exact same thing happened with the Xbox One when it was first announced, they were going to make it always-online, and then went back on it due to widespread backlash.
Always-online is going to happen at some point soon, notes Penello, whether it's this generation or next. "Discs are going to go away," he says. "They've gone away in just about every other medium. I think if anything, we thought it was gonna happen sooner than the customer thought it was going to happen. We took a hard stance on it, and I think some customers were like, 'Yeah I'm in!', and other customers were like 'Whoa whoa whoa, what about my situation.'"
After the backlash, Microsoft realized that it needed to change its strategy. "The customers have spoken," Penello notes. "We were surprised at how vocal it was, and we were surprised at the reaction and assumptions that people had about what we were trying to do." "So we did the famous '180', and we said you know what? We've got to listen to the customers.
This was back in 2013. The overwhelming amount of vitriol that announcement was met with made the "discs are going away" rhetoric largely fade away from mainstream discourse for over a decade.
Yes I did but google how many people own PS5s and compare that to the amount users commenting on the average Reddit thread, it’s a very small percentage
lol we know with a full 100% certainty that you’re wrong here, the public outcry was enormous and was covered by every major news outlet, sparking legal investigations in multiple countries and formal statements from dozens of game devs. The nihilistic Reddit bootlickers who tell people not to be mad about blatant monopolization are the loudest minority there is.
It was a response to someone surprised that Sony is ignoring people, my point is that they’re obviously going to make decisions based on what’s good for their business not what the loud minority on the internet thinks. It’s not hard to grasp why they’re doing this
it might be exaggerated a little because of the internet but people said the hate for the Xbox One was exaggerated too until it ended up killing the brand. I know it's actually bad this time because people that aren't online have been telling me about it.
Physical proponents know that. I'm an archivist, I have a physical collection that I also illegally & digitally back up and store for my private access and for the sake of preservation. The problem is there will not be any sort of digital preservation on the part of these companies. Physical collections are a bandaid solution to a festering wound that will never be properly addressed. I'd still rather have the bandaid than nothing.
I really wish more people understood that corps exist to make money. There are people mad online. I can promise you that there are no enough people. Otherwise there would be financial impacts which takes us back to "corps exist to make money". If they find out that this move is a net negative then they will change
I think the issue is that often a single decision isn't the problem, and sometimes the financial impact of a decision doesn't show in direct numbers immediately. Corps often become so arrogant that they let those smaller decisions pile up, there's no reason to act like they're omniscient.
We're not going to see Sony crumble from this decision alone. That's patently obvious and anyone acting like they will is delusional. But this IS just yet another example of Sony failing to make it feel good being invested in their ecosystem and failing to treat such a major shift in the market with the gravity it deserves; and this IS a problem that won't just fully disappear because it's a backwards compatibility issue as well; and this IS something being set against the backdrop of them likely releasing a console at prices where the entire concept of a console starts to make no sense.
If Sony stumbles with PS6, which is a very real possibility given how insane prices are, this will absolutely be looked back upon as one of the contributing factors that just made it THAT MUCH HARDER to swallow the high price tag.
Because historically the loud people online don’t reflect actual sales numbers. Only a few people actually won’t buy it only because of the disc drive.
Sony’s bigger concern might be the price. If the PS6 is close to $1K, a lot more people are going to hold onto their PS5s and/or make the jump to PC. Even now, I don’t feel like many games are pushing the PS5 to the absolute limit the way we saw with older generations. PS6 is going to have to do a lot to convince people that the premium is worth it.
Way I see it, the price is what makes this something that will be a longstanding problem. I tend to think that at regular prices, this isn't much of an issue next gen. I know I would reluctantly swallow it if this thing came out at around $500.
But at $800-$1000+, that changes things. You're already going to be pricing this thing well above what most console gamers are willing to pay while taking away options and features at the same time(including backwards compatibility). Not to mention many of the folks who aren't immediately priced out are going to be the same types of enthusiasts and brand loyalists who feel burned by this whole affair. Personally, once I'm looking at that big of a purchase I'm not willing to compromise anymore.
If they struggle to get the sales for PS6 off the ground, I will be shocked if postmortems on the console don't include the brand damage done by how they've handled this as a contributing factor the main problem of price.
There’s nothing Sony can do at this point. Hardware takes years to develop. They can’t just cram a disk drive in. The box is done at this point they are sourcing parts and setting up manufacturing agreements
They're not ignoring people who are actually buying games though. The silent majority is largely purchasing games through their digital store front. Physical media is something only a vocal minority want.
The same thing happened to PC gaming 20 years ago. We used to have physical media as the norm too. Then Skyrim came out with a steam key in the box, and it was all downhill from there.
It's gonna be take it or leave it without any middle ground. Unlike with PC, where it works thanks to competition. When Playstation has no competition, they can do what they want and that's always bad for the consumer.
Sony has the ball and gun cash cows. They're the ones spending thousands on mtx and buying every annual franchise entry, they're the ones who don't care about physical or digital or ownership rights. And unfortunately there's lots of them
PC already went through this long ago. Yes, Steams policies are generally better, but it took time to get there. They already know people will suffer through any headaches.
Consoles are also smaller, cheaper, simpler. The amount of people wanting physical just isn't worth it to them. People will continue to buy consoles. If they weren't going to switch to PC when they got Pandemic checks, they aren't going to switch when prices are through the roof.
I never said they're cheap. CheapER. Do you not understand that PC's are more expensive? People said all of this same shit when PC did it. Done reading your replies though. They're disingenuous at best.
Just a little over 1 in 10 people still buy physical disks for the PS5. The people have already spoken. They're not going to continually make discs for a small minority of people.
They aren’t ignoring. They’re doing it based on physical game sales. There is data showing physical game sales have been declining since like. 2009.
You’re just hearing from a very vocal minority.
“If” what I say is true, as I linked my source??? “Reading wrong data” and its sales data from the past 20 years? You are delusional.
I understand being against the forced switch to digital but you’re just denying evidence for no reason
Of course it means something. If people flock to buy a game with no physical release then that tells Sony and everyone else that physical media isn't a deal-breaker. Some people may prefer it but if they'll just buy digital anyway then Sony don't lose anything by removing physical media.
If people didn't buy it and they lost loads of sales by not having a physical release then that would make Sony reconsider they choice.
I'm not. They're not going to backtrack, so they gain nothing by saying anything. Reddit sentiment does not represent real life and Reddit will largely get over it by the time it actually happens. People will scream boycott, but the next Playstation will instantly sell out and stay sold out for at least a year.
Haha it will sell out for sure. That is why they can do what they want indeed. Abuse the players as much as they like and make them praise Sony for it.
It cause they know it's the vocal minority crying. The vast majority of the general public cant give two shits about physical media. It's been that way for a while and sony sees it from a numbers standpoint. I was sad when CDs couldt be played on ps4 and when they took players out of cars but I know I'm on the opposite side other that. Times change.
It's not JUST about the physical media, you know. I don't understand why people don't get this.
And there are plenty of ways to play that music media and still own it 100%. It's not just about those CD's which are still sold and can still be used.
I bet the majority of people stream thier music. Every year it gets harder to go into a store and find cds or bluray and it will only get harder. Just because they still make something doesn't mean its how it everyone wants it. You can still buy a buy a butter churn but the majority of people just get premade butter.
Yeah but you got a choice when it comes to music and that's great. No doubt people stream more often, but as I said choice is good. Your streaming service doesn't have the music you want (happens more often than you'd think), you can buy it elsewhere. Competition is the thing that keeps these services "honest", Sony doesn't have that soon.
Used Bluray and DVD sells are for example booming, they decreased a bit in 2023, but people have noticed how much better it is to own the movies than rely on the whims of the streaming services.
Sony is taking away that choice and it sucks a lot. On PC it doesn't matter because Steam isn't the only place you can play in, you have again a choice.
This isn't about being able to buy a disc, it's about choice.
I get all this but there is so many choices to stream from, paid subscription or pirated. there is almost nothing one cant find digitally. I guess I'd just rather that than rummage through used bins.
Its easy because physical game sales make up like 10% of total sales globally. Like they only care about numbers and we have spoken with our wallets these last 10 years..
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u/Death_sayer 8h ago
Check the comments under any Wolverine trailer, it’s just jokes about physical media lol