Sony just announced something that shook the gaming industry to its core. The announcement was that by the year 2028, the PlayStation will no longer be producing physical copies of video games, at least on their end. However, it isn’t Sony that first announced this, as they are not the ones paying for the production of the physical copies for third-party games.
Why is this a bad thing?
A lot of people see this as a loss for the industry, and there are several reasons why this is bad. Even if you just prefer digital copies, there’s just something sad when you are no longer able to buy physical copies. When you buy a box, it’s just a download code that you can input to get the game.
Possible price hikes and manipulation
First of all, most physical copies are more expensive compared to digital games. That’s because they have to pay for the box and the disc to be produced. Whereas digital copies would be just data that you download online. There’s not a lot of production cost.
If all games are digital in the future, then publishers can just set the price however they want. Then again, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it will sell. Since it will only be digital, the customers won’t have a choice, and this is PlayStation. This isn’t PC, where multiple platforms can have competitive prices.
No more selling used copies
This pretty much kills the second-hand market. What would people sell if there are no physical copies to do so? A lot of people can make decent money when they sell their copies of a game they already played. On top of that, vendors like GameStop who deal with these kinds of transactions are pretty much left outside in the cold.
It’s ironic since Sony had an ad campaign over a decade ago on how they were dunking on the Xbox’s “no second-hand copies”. They had this iconic video, and now comments are not happy.
It will impact the industry.
If this works, then you can bet that XBOX will follow. To be fair, GTA 6 has already started this, as they will not be shipping out discs. It’s a game box with nothing but a code inside. That’s just cruel and annoying. You buy a physical copy to put it on your console and play it. You don’t want to download it and wait for a long time to play the game.
Final Thoughts
This is definitely a grim announcement; however, this isn’t going to be implemented until the year 2028. Then again, that doesn’t mean that other companies can’t start doing this. After all, Sony can’t just dictate to third-party publishers to not make physical copies. GTA 6 is already doing that, but maybe some publishers aren’t that bold yet.
They don’t have the kick or namesake that GTA has, so for the time being, they’ll continue to pump out physical copies. Going digital isn’t so bad anyway, unless you don’t have any means of paying, or they take everything out in the future.
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