Sony is taking a leadership role when it comes to being an all-digital gamer and that kills a large part of the experience you are looking for as a gamer.
This is a column by Tobias “Rauf” Bergström. Here he presents his personal opinion.
Sony confirmed this week that it will not offer any physical editions of new Playstation games from 2028. This can be seen as a natural development of the society we live in, but it can also be seen as a somewhat dystopian development that takes away from us much of what once played a big role in the lives of gamers.
Now I have to sound like a neat whining old man who runs the whole “On my time…” thing. However, I would like to point out that those who did not stand outside a physical store waiting for a game release at midnight have unfortunately missed something special. I also want to highlight the feeling you get when you ask a friend “Have you played this?” and can pull out a physical copy of a game instead of turning on their TV and scrolling through poorly designed menus.
You shall not own anything
Now that Sony is taking the step to only sell games digitally also marks the absolute end of the era when we could actually own something. Those of us who actually own games in physical format will never have to worry about them one day disappearing as long as we take care of the disc or cassette. Games purchased digitally are not owned. You put money on a license that says you can play as long as the developers or publishers feel it is profitable to let you continue playing.
Sony says that the decision was made because digital sells more than physical and this does not surprise me at all. However, I don’t think that physical media is as dead as many people think. To me, the whole thing just feels like another push to try to be at the forefront when it comes to modernizing and “future-proofing” its platform. After all, Sony hasn’t shared any official sales figures when it comes to digital versus physical.
Digital games can be killed at any time
For example, if you own a racing game or sports game on disc, you will be able to play it as long as the disc is readable. If you own such a game digitally, it may be that you can play until a license expires.
Many games license their soundtracks from artists and bands for a certain period of time. The same applies to licenses to use a certain image model or a person’s likeness. Should such a license expire in a digital game and the owner of a song or car chooses not to renew it, an update must be pumped out to remove the part of the game that is no longer licensed for use. Should this happen to multiple cars, songs, people, or whatever at the same time, there’s nothing to say that the game’s servers won’t simply shut down. After all, developers and publishers must think from the most financially sustainable angle.
It doesn’t even have to be a licensing issue. It could simply be that a game no longer pulls in enough money to satisfy the suit gnomes and shareholders. They won’t watch their fingers and lose part of their profit because people want to keep playing an “old” game. They will find the first best opportunity to shut down the thing that “loses” money in a bad way.
What’s even the point of consoles now?
Both Playstation and Xbox have lived largely on offering game titles exclusive to their specific platform. However, these will most likely never be enough to keep the console market alive. Even if Sony slips in with its seventh Spider-Man game and Microsoft launches Halo 82, PC will always have access to the majority of games available for console. There will almost always be a platform for PC that has a sale on such a game.
Why would you ever buy a Playstation 6 when you can most likely buy a computer with equivalent or better performance for the same price while the selection of games is so incredibly much greater?
Sony’s latest move is, in my opinion, a gigantic poo sausage laid straight on gamers and the gaming industry as a whole. Everything should be digitized and you should never own anything. You should have no say and you should more or less just be a loser who “buys” a game for 800 kroner and then continues to fill shareholders’ wallets through microtransactions.
This is not just “a nail in the coffin”. This is the start of a dystopian future we could never have imagined “back in the day”.