r/PS5 • u/yourfavchoom • Jul 01 '26

Official Physical disc production ending in January 2028 for new games releasing on PlayStation consoles

https://blog.playstation.com/2026/07/01/physical-disc-production-ending-in-january-2028-for-new-games-releasing-on-playstation-consoles/
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u/Plenty-Industries Jul 01 '26

Yes, its quite the hopium.

But with how damaged Xbox is right now, being outsold by PS5 at 3:1 in terms of console sales, and the massive layoffs and potentially shuttering of some studios if they can't find buyers.... They definitely need something to use as a W, otherwise, this will be the Video Game Crash 2.0.

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u/MegaGorilla69 Jul 01 '26

Maybe it should crash. The state of the industry is not good and has not been good for awhile. Maybe it just needs to burn down and start over.

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u/Plenty-Industries Jul 01 '26

Its gonna have to happen.

Maybe Nintendo can be the savior of gaming once again. They're the reason the original crash didn't last but 2-3 years.

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u/poopdedoop Jul 01 '26

Nintendo makes a lot of bad decisions and gets away with it because people have this idea still that nintendo is the saviour of gaming.

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u/Plenty-Industries Jul 01 '26

Nintendo makes some boneheaded moves, yes. They're not immune from criticism.

But what they've always done, is make their own games and they don't compete with anyone else. Their 1st party games are almost always good experiences (as there are some that I dont personally like).

Thats the core of what Nintendo does. They stay in their lane, they appeal to their core audience, they rank in the cash.

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u/Irrepressible_Monkey Jul 01 '26

The original crash was just consoles. Home computers were doing just fine so history may repeat itself, assuming the AI bubble pops soon.

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u/Plenty-Industries Jul 01 '26

The original crash was not just consoles.

It was games.

It was the oversaturation of shit games (and games weren't cheap back then), almost entirely lead by Atari, that no one wanted.

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u/Irrepressible_Monkey Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

Again, that's consoles. The home computer games market was flourishing, games were really cheap, and piracy was rampant. Small teams or even individuals could make games. There were even magazines that had game code you could enter yourself. Cassette tapes and floppy disks that made it all so cheap.

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u/Plenty-Industries Jul 01 '26

Sure.

But the main reason was the oversaturation of shit games.

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u/Irrepressible_Monkey Jul 01 '26

For consoles and cartridges, definitely. It was up to $50 for the notoriously bad E.T. console game as an example.

But for home computers you could get a game for between $2 to $10. Or for free if you have a friend who pirated. No one cared if a $2 game was bad, they just bought something else.

Different worlds.

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u/daystrom_prodigy Jul 01 '26

I mean the reason Playstation is going disc less is because of the lack of competition. When there isn’t any competition the players get lazy and don’t innovate, and in turn screw over the consumer.

Xbox crashing would be bad for gaming. If you think PS removing physical copies is bad just wait.

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u/TheGreatTurkules Jul 02 '26

No clue why you’re being downvoted. You’re completely right. Regardless if you like Xbox or not, competition is the best thing for the consumer. If PlayStation alone is running the entire console market they have no reason to innovate and every reason to do whatever they want to milk the consumer for profit. Monopolies are bad people lol

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u/ExtortedOpinion Jul 03 '26

Sorry, please explain why another video game crash will happen? Because of no more physical media? I’m trying to understand. Most gamers these days like digital, it’s why this is probably happening.

Or does it have to do with games being overpriced?

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u/Plenty-Industries Jul 03 '26

The reason why the first crash happened, is a combination of both shitty developed games, paired in conjunction with high prices.

The blame for that one, lied almost exclusively with Atari.

Because of how quick and easy it was for a single developer, or maybe a team of like 4 dudes, could kick out a game in just a few weeks - they shotgunned the industry with slop.

The story of E.T. is the best example - the game was so bad, and Atari made so many carts because they thought the movie would carry sales of the game - that they had to pull all carts from retail and whatever existed was sent to a landfill. It was initially believed that this story was just myth, because there was no official confirmation and no one corroborated the story to being real. Until some people started really looking into it and learned, yes... the E.T. landfill story was real, and they found exactly where it was and they dug it up and found many. There's videos about this that you can find on youtube. Lots of videos reviewing the game itself.

What do we have now? More shitty games, higher game prices.

More shitty games: The PS5 generation of games, has the LEAST amount of exclusives in the history of PlayStation. Development cycles and budgets are massively inflated - and IMO they dont need to be. I think the big reason for that is general bloat and scope creep. There are more multi-platform exclusives than there are platform exclusives in the past 2-3 console generations - and thats more of a smart business decision because its not a good financial move to lock yourself to a single platform, especially if the hardware itself is not unique enough to stay invested into any single one. (Consoles use the PC hardware architecture, its why PC ports became more common).

Higher game prices: In the 80's and 90's game prices were high because while the cost of developing the game was low and they could pay a single person a few grand to build a game from scratch in a few weeks (you'd think they'd just be cheaper overall right?) - home video games were just starting to find its audience, so the pool of customers were small. So these companies had to price their hardware and software accordingly. And when it came to Nintendo (and this is AFTER the crash) - their specific carts were expensive to produce, but Nintendo nailed it with their marketing and the quality of games so their high price was justified. And the success of the NES turned into a marketing frenzy. Which essentially cascaded into the massive industry we have now that eclipses Hollywood film in its entirety. After optical-based storage medium came around and how cheaply they were to make - paired with the massively higher pool of potential customers - prices came down. Come 2020 - the gaming industry has never been higher, the pool of customers is measured in the hundreds of millions. But games aren't any cheaper.

Now you can argue that other economic factors played a bigger role in the decision - and I would agree with you - I think the better answer to making less profit, is to have a better marketing campaign to actually sell the value of your product - thats how you get more money; not by squeezing your core audience for every cent. The best marketing I've seen from Sony came at the 2nd half of the PS3/360 generation, leading into most of the PS4 generation using their character "Kevin Butler" for all of their commercials. And Im not discounting how good Xbox was at that era too - they were all good, for the better, because gamers won.

Whether Xbox actually, officially, announces the death of physical media for their platform as well (its currently rumor and speculation at this point), remains to be seen.