Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

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• Hacker News
• I feel the physical disc died a long time ago, most games require heavy patching to fix bugs or download new content, or even in some cases download whole portions of the game, so they rely on PS servers to even function anyway. The only advantage they have is you can sell them or buy used.

  I know there's a strong desire for physical media, but games are not the same as movies or music and haven't been for a long time.

  by djhworld
• Starting 2029:

    we don't have your game! and what are going to do now?
  

  (Polish movie quote paraphrase btw.)
  by p0w3n3d
• This move, executed when storage prices are as outrageous as they are? Again, class warfare is being waged one-sidedly.
  by Varelion
• Guess I’ll be boring and stick to my old hardware and games (PS3, Switch, GameCube, Wii, and even my SNES Classic).
  by temporallobe
• I will no longer buy playstations starting now
  by callamdelaney
• I guess the steam machine just came in at the right time.

  so if you want offline access what happens ? if I wanna trade games what happens. ?

  by dzonga
• The sad thing is that the knee jerk reaction here is going to be “omg just vote with your wallet, don’t buy”

  But the truth is it’s bullshit and this attitude that companies should be able to do whatever they want because it’s a free market is getting so tiresome

  Clearly there is agreement that things can be taken too far - as soon as one single consumer protection/anti competitive/monopoly preventing law exists, you’ve admitted those types of laws are needed

  So then you’re only arguing about degrees and companies shouldn’t be allowed to do shit that harms consumers this way

  On the surface this seems reasonable - it’s inevitable - discs aren’t going to hang around forever

  But this goes back to what it means to own something and we’re all being relegated to serfs who don’t own shit

  You wanna get rid of discs? Fine, but give me an alternative so that I still own what I buy and can resell it at will

  by gxs
• It's a pretty cynical move for certain. Hang on to the disks/consoles you have, ready for the boom in the used disks market.
  by Getchowned
• Not a fan of this and other consoles moving to digital only. Behind us are the days when you could share/borrow games with friends
  by petarb
• For me: All incentive to purchase a console is now gone. PC and Steam is the way, at least while Gabe is around.
  by SlightlyLeftPad
• This is another opportunity for the EU to reign in and create a proper definition of ownership so that this does not pass.

  Of course, it would be interesting to hear the freemarketeering on this site and how people should "vote with their wallet" and sites/movements such as $freeplaystation.whatever sprouting pseudopolemic nonsense.

  by kakadu
• Voting with wallet works, unless there is a cartel there. Which probably is. Similar as with Samsung's RAM
  by p0w3n3d
• PlayStation saw Microsoft's recent news and decided to take out the trash this week.

  The entire console gaming industry has been decimated in the last few weeks.

  by oliyoung
• Some libraries let you borrow Playstation video games. I wonder if those libraries will have access to a system that allows people to borrow digital video games.
  by guyomes
• Lol, no
  by Pooge
• Libraries? Where we're* going, we won't need libraries!

  * 'we' - book, film and gaming industries

  by tavavex
• I hope for the EU to come after Sony. Before you could argue that you could buy games as a disc and just play them. It of course was a monopoly before, but now it is pretty clear
  by zuInnp
• You will not have to deal with clutter if you don’t own anything.
  by whatever1
• To play devil's advocate here, imagine a world where the exact opposite has occurred: physical media (CDs specifically) is the norm, and there's no DRM, so the raw data can be copied right off of it. In this world, scalpers scoop up all available inventory of physical media from local retailers, consumers pay a premium to them for the original product, the scalpers sell cheaper copies where the game binary has been modified to insert advertisements or mine cryptocurrency, out of the woodwork appears a cottage industry of companies offering services to modify game binaries and connect them to the ad networks and crypto exchanges. The scalper gets a cut, the gamer gets a cheaper game, everyone is happy.
  by metrognome
• I wonder why Sony or Microsoft don't try to 'game' the used market by becoming the used marketplace for virtual copies. They can charge a commission for every game that changes hands.
  by 1-6
• Why would someone ever buy new, if that was the case?
  by hootz
• Because if they don't offer a used virtual marketplace, everyone has to buy new games directly from them.

  A used game market provides downwards pressure on new games.

  by bhelkey
• I remember having a goal of eventually publishing on a Nintendo and/or PlayStation console, when I first got in to game dev. Now they've both gotten so far away from gaming as I knew it that I would be embarrassed to publish on either company's consoles.

  Now my focus is to be able to publish high quality games that run well on those anbernic/miyoo/ayn-style handheld devices. Those things are actually priced for consumers and the ones that have card slots provide a method for physical media. And of course, using those as a floor, the games could always upscale for more powerful machines.

  I'm just so tired of this continual march toward investor appeasement at the expense of the consumers. They're games. They're entertainment. For people to play. Not how I want them to play them; how people want to play them. People shouldn't have to have an account to play them. They shouldn't have to invest a month of rent to play them. They shouldn't have to worry about me revoking their ability to play them. It's just so frustrating to see how far we've gotten from "drop in a quarter and enjoy". The industry is in sad shape and getting sadder by the day.

  by catapart
• And thus demarcs the extinction of games published after that date. 100 years from now those disks will be all that is knowable to the extent libraries and museums preserve compatible drives.
  by rietta
• Didn't Sony get in trouble for deleting movies from devices ? I guess they want to do the same for their console too.

  So people should just stop buying games that are not on phyical media. THat will get Sony to change fast.

  by jmclnx
• It was nice while it lasted. I usually borrow games from the library since I don’t really have enough time to play for justifying a 80€ purchase.

  Will skip PS6 and probably just not bother with gaming.

  by jurgenburgen
• Is that going into effect globally? It's hard to believe this will sit well with Japanese customers where second hand gaming markets are, dare I say it, culturally relevant.
  by codingjoe
• time to short gamestop?

  jokes aside, as someone who has never bought physical games, the landscape for physical ownership in this space was already shrinking.

  there is a major chunk of playerbase who only plays online multiplayers, which are tied to always-online mode and constant updates. even if you could buy these titles on a disc, practically speaking they carried very little value of physical ownership.

  we are just boiling the frog with little more intensity now. if it is possible to repurpose the bluray reader of ps5 to connect to pc, it might be a nice way to invest in one before they stop selling too.

  by rldjbpin
• Bummer! Based on the current trajectory, PS6 will be the first non-handheld PS I will not own.
  by nsbk
• Haven’t bought a physical game in at least 15 years (because of Steam). I do wonder how many people still buy physical copies these days.

  Not sure what the sales are like on PS but at least on Steam you can find great deals for the digital copies as well. (You lose the reselling though)

  by Insanity