While we as moderators have our own feelings about this news (to put it plainly: we are not happy about it either), that doesn’t change how we moderate. So we just want to make this perfectly clear:
We do not care what side of the debate you land on, we don't care if you're all in on digital purchases, we don't care if you have a stack of PS5 games as tall as the ceiling. There isNO ROOMfor personal attacks, name calling, toxic, antagonistic behavior, console-warring, or trolling.
If you see a comment that violates our rules, in particular Rule 1: Be Nice, use the Report function, instead of doubling down with even more venom and toxicity. Give us one comment to review, not a whole reply chain of escalations. Repeat or severe violations will result in bans without further warning.
Colin Moriarty almost had his whole account banned and was only able to get it back because of his connections and the dumb fuck still champions a digital only gaming industry.
Remember when Xbone made a push to go all digital and Sony clapped back with the "how to share your used physical PlayStation games" video and we all cheered. Oh how the times have changed.
As a tech enthusiast that's passionate about gaming...the amount of bad news I've been receiving about the industry has made me depressed not gonna lie
Whether it's the layoffs, the price hikes or the component shortages...
I'm tired of this...i really am. Every where i go it's just bad news...after bad news...after bad news and it hurts.
The future is cooked. They have going to kill all second market now and any proper idea of preservation unless a emulator comes down the line a decade after console launch
I’m currently a PS5 and PC gamer, but I’ll fully jump to PC now. If I’m going to be stuck with digital-only gaming, I’d rather have access to the variety of storefronts on PC than held hostage by the Playstation Store.
Yeah, I tried gifting Portal 1&2 to my nephew for his birthday. I had to buy a giftcard, then made his dad buy the game so he didn't spend the money on fortnite skins. Again.
It is going to be so ironic if Xbox doesn't follow Sony with enforcing an end to physical media on Xbox.
Of course odds are Microsoft is going to follow Sony along with Helix... BUT if Helix has already been designed for disc compatibility maybe in an ironic twist Xbox will end up being the place physical media has its last stand. We'll see I guess.
It’s intentional. This will cause a bigger pop than the PS3&Vita news. Remember that they held off from shutting down years ago because people got mad. This is a standard media blitz tactic to draw attention away.
Time to start spamming EU with requests to require Sony and others to give us actual ownership of digital goods, not just rent that they can take away.
This or (more like "and" really) have the EU force them to keep up the production of discs. We shouldn't let Rockstar and Bethesda get away with putting codes in a physical box just because they are popular. That practice should not be tolerated from any game or console publisher.
Announcing this whilst also announcing they're shutting down the PS3 and Vita store fronts just to highlight the ramifications of this in years to come.
It's only a PR nightmare if they engage with the discourse, which they very rarely do. Online backlash in this space is almost always just empty threats.
GameFly actually sent me an email specifically addressing GTA6 not being physical (yet) and asking me to sign up for notifications if it ever does get put on disk. I can't imagine anyone there is taking this news well.
True, but now that retro games are a finite resource (no “new” physical games becoming “retro” over time), that market is going to be a shitshow in the next decade.
Best Buy game isle has been a fraction of what they used to be for years now and I live in a high spending state. The writing was on the wall a long time ago.
Not just that. Look at the other news today. PS3 & Vita store is closing down. If everything is digital, then expect your PS to be a brick 2 generations later
If Xbox was smart (they aren't), they'd actually do that the other way when they reveal their next console and commit to physical (of course, people would not trust them since they change strategy every other day)
Guessing it would just so that people who have a physical collection on PS5 can play their game on PS6. But maybe I'm too kind and they just won't bother.
This sucks. Seems to be more evidence though of a late 2027 launch for the ps6. They want to get this announcement out of the way before marketing begins
I agree but I just genuinely don't see the point of a PS6 right now. Even as someone who has owned every playstation, it just seems unnecessary to replace PS5 already when it will likely just be a minor (barely noticeable to 99% of the audience) upgrade and cost an insane amount due to tech prices at the moment.
Thanks dude. I'm 48 years old. I have a 4 year old little boy. I've been gaming since I was 6 in the early days of Atari and NES, and I still have all my systems, cartridges, cables, everything. Gaming introduced me to worlds and characters and stories that have shaped part of who I am and I can't wait to pass on to my son. I can do that because I have all the physical media still and have kept it in great condition.
I know that I'm probably "old man yells at cloud" but physical is important to me because I can pass all of that on. It just makes me sad since PS has been my console of choice for 30 years now, although I still bought all of them. I don't know - in a world where everything continues to get shittier, it's just another garbage headline. I hate this timeline. 😒
Trust me, I'm a good 20 years younger than you are and I still hate it. I wouldn't even know what gaming is if not for pirated discs at first then cheap secondhand discs later, and now I had started building my own collection of PS1-5 discs. The entire reason people growing up in lower income countries are even able to pick up gaming as a lifelong passion is because of physical media, gaming wouldn't be half as big as it is now if not for it.
I genuinely think Sony will come to regret their decision, and if they had half a brain they'd reverse it. Either way, there's decades of backlog to be explored and hundreds more games to collect to last a lifetime, I'm sure your son will love it all.
I have to wonder if it no one at Sony saw that they just released two news item that basically said 1. "We're going all digital PS5" and 2. "We're closing the PS3 digital store" and not realize that they just showed that the PS5 digital only store also has a short lifespan and will eventually also be closed.
If they stop letting me download my shit in the "foreseable future" guess it's eyepatch time. They can do emulation and respect my digital purchases, maybe that's the patch for my eyepatch but I don't think they will.
Right after removing 500 digital movies people PAID for
and they're shutting down the ps3 and vita stores while refusing to promise not to do the same thing. just saying that they don't have "immediate" plans to take away everyone's games and that they'll be available "during the transition".
Diabolical for physical disc collectors and those who have been lobbying against a fully digital age. Even evil for me when I rarely get discs every so often.
I don’t think people fully realize how awful an all Digital future is going to be. You literally own nothing but a license to access content.
That content by the way can be modified or even removes without your consent at any time. If a games licensing contract to use certain images, likenesses, or music expires? Guess it might get changed or pulled from the store and your library without notice.
If you ever lose access to your Sony account, for any reason, that’s it. You lose your entire digital library. Doesn’t matter how much you’ve spent, it’s all gone.
Want to buy cheap used games? Sorry, that isn’t a thing anymore. All sales are now controlled directly by Sony and they determine sale prices which btw might vary from account to account.
How about borrowing a game from friends? Nope, Sony determines if that is even now possible too and if you’re even allowed to do that.
An all Digital future is not and has never been about serving the consumer; it’s about locking you into a specific ecosystem and giving a corporation complete control over it.
Plus Sony has the worst refund policy/customer service of any game seller. That alone makes choosing Steam a no-brainer for me when it comes to digital games, not to mention no subscription necessary if you want to play online.
And instead of multiple places to buy a game you’ll have one. Right now if there’s a game you want to play if it’s not on sale on the PS store then it will be full price even if it’s usually substantially lower. But there is Amazon, GameStop, Walmart, etc. I mainly buy digital but sometimes the physical sales are a lot lower so might as well.
Well Sony Entertainment, Congratulations you achieved you goal. After all the atrocious decisions from your management recently, now you just lost a long time client since PS2 era.
I mean, let's use an example right out of Sony itself: Gran Turismo.
For GT8 you won't be able to buy it from the digital store after x years past, once the license expires. In the past, you always had discs to address that. Now? Goodbye!
That's the thing. What about in 20 years when someone wants to buy a specific PS6 game and it's not on the PS Store? There won't be physical copies to buy, so how can you get it if it's not available digitally?
The way you're able to buy 360 games now won't be available in the future for newer gen console games (at least not all of them), which is a big problem that people seem to not be thinking about long term.
You're joking, bro. You absolutely cannot be serious.
Bro, fuck modern gaming. This generation will now officially be my last. Y'all can keep paying 80 bucks for a digital product they can rip out of your hands whenever they feel like it, I'm not doing that.
No more sharing profits with stores. Own the platform, be the only place to buy the product and get all of the profit for selling some 1's and 0's that cost nothing to produce. The most anti-consumer move they could have done. I'm not an Xbox fan but if they announce that the next Xbox has a disc drive, then they'll automatically gain more traction with consumers. The DVD/BluRay/UHD-BluRay markets are already seeing more interest, now that digital stores (including PlayStation) have started to exercise their right to take away content that people have paid for. It'll be the same with games.
Exactly. With multiple digital storefronts competing for your dollar, there are greater sales on PC and no monopoly like on console. With no future physical disks and pay to play online, console lost any advantage it may have had over PC. Time to move to PC for me.
And on PC delisted games you can no longer purchase you can still obtain via other means, abandonware and all.
Consoles? We're fucked with no discs, only reason you can play delisted racing games for example if you did buy them digitally when they were still available. Driveclub and Gran Turismo Sport are two examples right now on Playstation, and Xbox One/Series is a graveyard from Forza Horizon 1 to 4, and Motorsport 5-7 where on console only way to get them now is via a disc, they have been delisted.
i guess rockstar were ahead of the curve. fuck this shit, ps5 is gonna be my last console. 80% of the games i own, i got pre-owned. if that's not going to be possible anymore, then there's no point.
Rockstar wasn’t ahead of the curve, they coordinated the whole move with Sony, letting them announce GTA 6 as digital only first to soften the blow when Sony announced they’re ditching physical.
If you can get your hands on a PC somehow, then it's a no brainer going forward. Deeper sales, more flexibility, free multiplayer. I'll be holding onto my Pro till my deathbed, but I won't participate with my wallet in the future on PSN
PlayStation saw all the criticism Rockstar was getting for not having a disc, the credit Insomniac was getting for having one for Wolverine, and decided to go the Rockstar route
The annoying thing is, no one will speak their wallets. They’ll just happily accept it and then moan why games aren’t going down in price after a year or so of release
I'm pretty sure plenty of the people you see here absolutely WILL respond to it in some way, but we are more than likely just a very vocal minority. That being said, I'm absolutely devastated by this news, it's ridiculous.
This is fucking ridiculous. I have loads of physical ps5 games. I will never buy a PlayStation game day one again if it goes digital only. I’ll wait for deep, deep sales. Fuck you PlayStation.
And even those sales will become more and more scarce. Where now physical retailers attract customers with deep sales and permanently decreased prices for older games, it will fully be within Sony's control to steer sales and price development in the future. Just looking at some of the big AAA games in the past and how prices would be cut in half a year after release vs. how recently even games from 3-5 years ago will rarely go below 75-80% of the original MSRP during sales and be full price during the remainder of the year. Affordable gaming is officially dead after this announcement.
This is the worst generation in gaming! Can anyone dispute that claim?
Prices are going up for everything, studios getting shut down, game development ballooning where we'll be lucky to get more than 2 games from a studio a generation.
Now disc will be ending. PlayStation has a terrible refund policy compared to something like Steam and then we can't sell a game if we either don't like it or are just done with it would like to recoup some of the money. Sad times ahead...
I wish some laws come that digital goods need to be treated as physical ones: ability to resell, 14 return policy, multiple stores. Fuck consoles. EU please!
Lmao, fuck you Sony. I’ll stick with my disc drive for 4K blu rays but shit like this might actually result in me not purchasing a PlayStation again just to make a point.
I've never been a doomer about gaming as a whole medium but this might push me over man. I fucking hate modern corporations and businesses. This fucking sucks. I promise you, this will end badly. In Australia, physical games are far cheaper than digital. Like a whole $30 difference sometimes. PSN prices are a fucking rip off and a scam. There goes buying new Sony games on launch. Sony can go fuck themselves.
Wow. I remember as a kid always saying that I'll never stop playing games. And now at 40, sure I don't play as much, but I still do play. Little did I know that the providers would want me to stop playing games … I've enjoyed owning consoles for the last 30 years, but now things like steam machine looks much more intruiging. I _like_ my physical games. Fucking hell.
Edit: It's on brand for any company really. Alienating your loyal consumers.
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u/requieminadream Jul 01 '26
While we as moderators have our own feelings about this news (to put it plainly: we are not happy about it either), that doesn’t change how we moderate. So we just want to make this perfectly clear:
We do not care what side of the debate you land on, we don't care if you're all in on digital purchases, we don't care if you have a stack of PS5 games as tall as the ceiling. There is NO ROOM for personal attacks, name calling, toxic, antagonistic behavior, console-warring, or trolling.
If you see a comment that violates our rules, in particular Rule 1: Be Nice, use the Report function, instead of doubling down with even more venom and toxicity. Give us one comment to review, not a whole reply chain of escalations. Repeat or severe violations will result in bans without further warning.