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Opening the game in the car ride home and reading the manual is something no one will never experience again.
Never in my life did I think newspapers would outlive PlayStation discs. Truly devastating news.
Sony moving to digital only, at the same time they just "stole" hundreds from movies from users libraries, is a dystopian nightmare.
In 2025 they shipped 70 million physical discs. This isn't about low sales; it's about controlling the market.
The problem is consumer rights, not physical going away. GOG proves digital copies can be owned. We need regulation that forces all digital copies to be the same as GOG
My local library has a collection of PS5 games that they hold for kids to be able to "rent" them out at no cost. Sad knowing that practice will be ending. Affording games is such a luxury
I honestly feel like we're in the Second Dark Age of Video Games. From the increasing prices from both games and consoles, the latter thanks to the memory shortage, neverending layoffs and studio closures, the push for live service despite multiple failures, games taking longer to develop, and the likely death of physical media, gaming feels very bleak this decade.
In an all digital gaming world, if you lose access to your PlayStation/Xbox/Steam account for any reason, you lose your entire gaming library. Nobody should be happy about that.
To me, the worst part is that people who can't afford full price games are now prohibited from the hobby. No more buying second hand or even borrowing from the local library. Sony is saying loud and clear that a lot of people simply don't deserve to play videogames. Horrible, reprehensible stuff.
The thing about that percentage of digital sales is that it is accounting for ALL digital purchases, including games that aren't available on disc and DLC. Whereas in the Insomniac leak, there are stats in there for multiple Playstation games and the physical purchases far outweigh the digital purchases for the same game. This isn't about the market changing, this is about them wanting to control the market
My PlayStation journey with 250+ physical games bought and 220+ platinums earned on PlayStation will end January 2028. I will not spend a single cent on a digital game that I don’t own.
On PC you also have a choice in storefronts. I only use Steam and Gog, but could choose to buy through the microsoft store or Epic. Or if a game is no longer available for purchase, or if ownership means nothing, tje high seas await. With a console, you're consigned to one store.
Say the line Bart: "If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't theft."
I think it's important to remember when people say that 90% of sales are digital that many of the biggest games the last year were digital only such as Arc Raiders, Silksong, Baldur's Gate (Collectors edition only), I certainly would have been them physical if I had the option. Edit: Also wanted to add that physical games are often resold which can massively reduce the "sales" number
1:43 A ratio skewed by also counting dlc, mtx, and games with no physical option as digitial sales against only physical games
This show has turned from something I used to look forward to all week, into my weekly dose of depression.
Losing physical media sucks, but we need to address the real problem here: licensing laws and digital access rights. These things need to be updated alongside the loss of physical media to protect consumers as we move forward. This digital move was inevitable, it's time for our laws to keep up.
I never knew that about GOG... I'm going to do my best to buy my games from there as of now.
The 20/80 phyical/digital sale split is misleading. The more important statistic would be what the distribution is for people who bought the PS5 with the disk reader. A lot of people bought the digital only PS5 because it was cheaper.
Time for Microslop to pull a UNO reverse on them and announce how easy it is to share games with your friends on Project Helix.