The Gaming News Thread (for news that doesn't need a thread)

[Lucky_Deity]

This is incredibley disappointing and depressing news as like a number of us here, I am a big advocate for physical media and the majority of video games I buy are physical, only going digital for games with no other option, the physical is an expensive limited release I missed out on or if it is a game I can live with not owning one day but even then, only if I get it incredibley cheap.

Going forward from 2028 onwards, I'll be going for Switch 2 if the option is there physically and I'm only going the Game-Key Card route when there is no other choice as I do now. There will inevitably be games in the future I will want to play but I will be very selective in this digital only future (e.g. games from my favourite series / developers).

I'm not exactly in a rush for the upcoming PS6 after this news either, it'll all depend on what games are on what platforms and what formats they are as well as pricing. There are hundreds of games to keep me busy for a lifetime anyway so no need to rush to adopting this digital only hellscape.

Regardless though this is going to be a massive negative change for consumers going forward, I'd like to be somewhat optimistic and hope they change course after the backlash but deep down we all know they want to do this whether we like it or not, just like everything in the world nowadays, it's tiring.

 

[BrokenPhoenix]

At the end of the day, we are where we are because consumers at large no longer buy physical releases as much as they used to. With already thin margins, producing, manufacturing, shipping, and then selling physical games via brick and mortar stores is becoming less and less profitable, I think.

They're essentially trying to sell physical games to a shrinking base of potential consumers. The industry seems to be in a not-so great place with downsizing/lay-offs, etc, as well. And with the rising cost of producing video games themselves, publishers/Sony simply want to keep more of the profit margins - which the easiest way to do so is cut out the retailer/disc costs and go digital.

All of us here much prefer a physical video game, but that's because we're on a forum largely for physical media; so a bit of a selection bias! However, we've seen it over the last 10-15 years or so; physical retailers pulling out from selling physical games because the customers just aren't there - GAME is dead, even the UK supermarkets stopped stocking physical games because of the overtaking of digital games. The only place I can think of in the UK where you can still buy a physical game from an actual store is Argos, but that's not a great indication of the health of physical games when there's only a single brick and mortar chain that are even stocking physical games.

Yes, there's online-only retailers like HIT and TGC, but it looks like physical games would have gone the way of Blu-ray/vinyl, where they would be for enthusiasts and collectors. Which isn't exactly ideal when your bog standard AAA game needs to sell millions to even see a profit.

If I take a look at my friend group, they all buy digital now. I (and we) are the outliers nowadays, as unfortunate as that is. I think we all knew this was coming, it's just a bit of a shock they've ripped the plaster off quite quickly in this case.

Personally, I'll probably be moving to PC as my main system for the next generation. Sony exclusives are no longer an allure for me, so if the choice in the digital future is between the PS Store and Steam/GOG, I'm choosing Steam/GOG.

 

[Spark_Heal]

I’m not too worried about Blu Ray movies for the time being. Sony aren’t the only company that produces them and film studios might hate it but they do need multiple revenue streams. Even if it’s just licensing the distribution rights to a company like Arrow keeping the format alive benefits them. Prices would increase but sooner or later companies are forced to recognise that reality. There’s a reason you can still get music on CD. Someone, somewhere is going to keep it going.



For games though it’s an uglier affair. Microsoft experimenting with digital only consoles, Nintendo’s cartridge system that appears to be unpopular with publishers because it prices them out, the attempt to justify Mario Kart and GTA charging extensional prices etc. it’s all been building to this and people have been rightfully concerned about it for at least 16 years. And much like GTA 6 pricing: some of them can actually get away with it. But the number of products that can be counted on one hand. Someone is going to find out the hard way.

Can Stellar Blade 3 afford to cut out 10% of their audience? And then during a recession will the remaining 90-85% can even think about giving them an inflated amount of money? Because I liked Stellar Blade okay but I’d have liked it a lot less if it cost more and I was unable to give it away afterwards.

 

[Aion]

At the end of the day, we are where we are because consumers at large no longer buy physical releases as much as they used to. With already thin margins, producing, manufacturing, shipping, and then selling physical games via brick and mortar stores is becoming less and less profitable, I think.

They're essentially trying to sell physical games to a shrinking base of potential consumers. The industry seems to be in a not-so great place with downsizing/lay-offs, etc, as well. And with the rising cost of producing video games themselves, publishers/Sony simply want to keep more of the profit margins - which the easiest way to do so is cut out the retailer/disc costs and go digital.

If I take a look at my friend group, they all buy digital now. I (and we) are the outliers nowadays, as unfortunate as that is. I think we all knew this was coming, it's just a bit of a shock they've ripped the plaster off quite quickly in this case.

Broken, forgive meee, for I must be blunt: in this instance, your username may be apt as a description. Whilst what you say is not entirely incorrect, you're only looking at the effect, not the cause, and in doing so justifying the end we're being forced to meet.

We did not reach this point because of basic preference, or 'cause the industry is unfortunate: 'tis by design. As for the increased costs aspect, that is is the result of hubris and failure, pushed onto customers. Much like people do not suddenly start thinking or accepting things as right or wrong until through social engineering and conditioning over time, this has been the goal for at least the last decade. The modern generation has been taught that streaming, subscribing and generally not owning is the norm; that there are no downsides.
Why do you need an ancient disc drive when you can 'own' everything at the touch of a button? Don't you know, this benefits you! The ability to keep you paying monthly, and retaining all the profits, as well as putting all the risk on you as a consumer that can have everything lost in a hacked minute are all coincidental, surely!

Y'know, the 'herd mentality' and referring to people as is less insult than fact. We are social animals, and we will by nature follow the collective groupthink, or suffer, for 'society' is a scary word. The younger generation, having not grew up actually owning what they buy, will see their friends (as you have, be you a younger Goku or no), family and others only buying digital. They will imitate. 'Tis no different than a child picking up habits from their parents.

This is of course a first world problem but, regardless, three things will always lead to the worst things imaginable: power without limit, money without end and - most prominent for plebs like us - laziness. Everyone, myself included, stopped going to shops to buy games physically. 'Tis simply far more convenient to use online stores. Online shopping for physical releases was still perfectly viable though, despite Sony/Xbox yearning for cutting out the middleman, accursed used sales they benefit not from and production costs. However, through the combination of convenience and a decade or two of projecting the image that subscribing is ownership, with gaming tourism fueled by hype over care or knowledge, we have reached this point. Microsoft and Sony wasting billions buying companies and ruining their franchises is not the reason, it is an excuse.

I think in another post you mentioned that you are going to buy GTAVI and, cunningly, you are trying to use genjustu (sry, don't know DBZ well enough for an equivalent reference) on yourself to make it all seem like one of those things. Much like the whole internet censorship tingymajig is a global agenda decided ahead of time and little to do with the UK, besides it testing the waters, this whole situation has been manufactured long before the trend became a trend. VI being announced as digi-only on release a week ago, then Sony announcing this when they're championing VI, goes hand-in-hand.

TLTR: A does not wake up one day, trapped in its narrow pathway to stunned slaughter. That was decided before it was born. Grim metaphors aside, the same is true of the current generation. Rockstar and GTAV started this with popularising and normalising micro-transactions. Rockstar, aided by Sony, is here to finish the job.

 

[BrokenPhoenix]

We did not reach this point because of basic preference, or 'cause the industry is unfortunate: 'tis by design. As for the increased costs aspect, that is is the result of hubris and failure, pushed onto customers. Much like people do not suddenly start thinking or accepting things as right or wrong until through social engineering and conditioning over time, this has been the goal for at least the last decade. The modern generation has been taught that streaming, subscribing and generally not owning is the norm; that there are no downsides.
Why do you need an ancient disc drive when you can 'own' everything at the touch of a button? Don't you know, this benefits you! The ability to keep you paying monthly, and retaining all the profits, as well as putting all the risk on you as a consumer that can have everything lost in a hacked minute are all coincidental, surely!

I completely agree with you on the risks of digital ownership. The fact that your library of digitals games can be wiped out by a server shutdown or a licensing dispute is a big step backwards for us as consumers. You are 100% right that the risk has been pushed entirely onto us, we are on the exact same page there!

However, I don't think it's exactly by design or socially engineered by the gaming suits (that would be giving them far too much credit imo). I think the truth of the matter is a bit more boring than a grand conspiracy to push digital gaming onto gamers.

Imo, people didn't stop going to shops to buy physical games because they were compelled to by companies; they stopped because downloading a game at midnight from your sofa is far more convenient than going to a shop or even buying the physical game from an online retailer. Consumers generally follow the path of least resistance, so when that is on offer, more customers will flock to it. The market voted with their wallets and they decided by and large, they prefer buying digital games.

In regard to the increased cost of making video games, I am with you that there is huge corporate bloat and terrible management decisions from these companies. But if you strip all of those problems away, the cost of making a AAA game with hundreds if not thousands of developers over 6/7 years, has definitely increased compared to the PS2/PS3 days. Sure, there's bad decision making going on, but the cost of making video games has changed over the last 20 years or so.

Online shopping for physical releases was still perfectly viable though, despite Sony/Xbox yearning for cutting out the middleman and production costs.

It was viable for us as customers, but probably less so for the publishers. I'm pretty sure there are reports suggesting that 75-85% of PlayStation sales are now digital, which has only been increasing over the last decade or so. So publishers are trying to sell physical games in a smaller and smaller market, which means less revenue and less profit (through a method that already had razor thin margins). Is it then any wonder Sony has decided to bin off producing and selling PS discs?

I genuinely believe the vast majority of the gaming public just prefer the convenience of digital libraries, and the corporations are simply following the path that makes them the most money (as they all do). I would say it's a "bottom-up" consumer preference rather than a top-down conspiracy by the gaming corporations. After all, if consumers preferred the service given by physical video games, physical games would be making up much more of Sony's overall sales.

I think in another post you mentioned that you are going to buy GTAVI and, cunningly, you are trying to use genjustu (sry, don't know DBZ well enough for an equivalent reference) on yourself to make it all seem like one of those things. Much like the whole internet censorship tingymajig is a global agenda decided ahead of time and little to do with the UK, besides it testing the waters, this whole situation has been manufactured long before the trend became a trend. VI being announced as digi-only on release a week ago, then Sony announcing this when they're championing VI, goes hand-in-hand.

Even before GTA6, I would still buy digital games - and that wasn't because I've been "conditioned" to buy digital games, it's because the price and/or convenience was better than buying it physically in those cases. I'm not a physical-only snob, haha. If one of the most anticipated video games is going to be digital-only, I'm still going to buy it.

Rockstar and Sony are likely looking at dwindling disc sales overall, and their lessening profit margins on selling discs, then thinking to themselves "**** it, why bother spending the money on pressing and shipping discs to a smaller and smaller market when all the money is in digital?".

We both agree that the outcome is ****. In an ideal world consumers should have the choice. However, market forces have dictated that physical discs aren't as viable as they once were, unfortunately. I think where we disagree is that I largely blame market forces, while you blame the matrix

 

[cfx]

I’m not too worried about Blu Ray movies for the time being. Sony aren’t the only company that produces them and film studios might hate it but they do need multiple revenue streams. Even if it’s just licensing the distribution rights to a company like Arrow keeping the format alive benefits them. Prices would increase but sooner or later companies are forced to recognise that reality. There’s a reason you can still get music on CD. Someone, somewhere is going to keep it going.

Indeed this is not an issue, at least not currently or related to the end of PlayStation discs. Here is an article in German about the plant Sony uses for most discs outside of Asia, I believe:

Sony setzt künftig auf Micro Optics

Der japanische Konzern Sony will künftig Neuerscheinungen von Konsolenspielen nur noch online anbieten. Der Wegfall von Speichermedien wie etwa Compact Discs bedeutet größere Umstrukturierungen der zentralen Produktion im Sony-Werk in Thalgau (Flachgau). Der Personalstand soll dennoch...

salzburg.orf.at

I don't read German, but here is a machine translation. To summarize it, a portion of the disc pressing plant in Austria will be converted to another purpose, but disc production remains, in a reduced capacity.

Spoiler: google translate

Sony to focus on MicroOptics in the future

The Japanese corporation Sony plans to offer new console game releases exclusively online in the future. Eliminating physical storage media, such as compact discs, entails major restructuring of central production operations at the Sony plant in Thalgau (Flachgau). Nevertheless, staffing levels are expected to remain unchanged.

Currently, 600,000 discs roll off the assembly line at the Sony plant in Thalgau every day. That figure is set to drop significantly starting in 2028, as new PlayStation games will no longer be released on disc. This corporate decision will have a direct impact on production in Thalgau, says Dietmar Tanzer, head of Sony DADC.

"PlayStation currently accounts for about 50 percent of our volume, and roughly 20 percent of that consists of new orders. We are talking about approximately ten percent of our volume by 2028," says Tanzer.

300 employees to be retrained

The Thalgau plant currently employs 300 people, all of whom were informed of the restructuring on Wednesday. Tanzer emphasizes that the company intends to maintain this workforce level.

These changes have been in the making for some time. According to management, the Thalgau plant has recently invested around 30 million euros in new technology for manufacturing optical microlenses. This is set to become a new business segment, says Markus Streibl, Head of Micro Optics at Sony DADC.

Pilot operations underway; mass production to start in 2027

"Micro-optics involves the miniaturization of optical systems and elements, serving to focus and direct light within a very small space. One potential application, for example, is a vehicle turn signal projected onto the asphalt," says Streibl. Employees have already been reassigned from disc production to pilot operations. The company plans to retrain them on a large scale in the future. Sony aims to launch mass production of optical microlenses as early as next year.

For games though it’s an uglier affair. Microsoft experimenting with digital only consoles, Nintendo’s cartridge system that appears to be unpopular with publishers because it prices them out, the attempt to justify Mario Kart and GTA charging extensional prices etc. it’s all been building to this and people have been rightfully concerned about it for at least 16 years. And much like GTA 6 pricing: some of them can actually get away with it. But the number of products that can be counted on one hand. Someone is going to find out the hard way.

There are going to be a lot of effects both direct and peripheral. Businesses such as Playasia will be impacted. They sell other things and for now still have Nintendo, but they will still be losing some percentage of their business. That's also an avenue of exposure for indies and other games that may not get a lot of publicity otherwise, that will no longer be there.

Can Stellar Blade 3 afford to cut out 10% of their audience? And then during a recession will the remaining 90-85% can even think about giving them an inflated amount of money? Because I liked Stellar Blade okay but I’d have liked it a lot less if it cost more and I was unable to give it away afterwards.

Loss of used games sales is certainly a potential issue. There's a tradeoff since some that would otherwise buy used are forced to buy new, but then there's the loss of those who won't buy knowing they can't sell. I don't buy used unless it's the only way to get something, and don't buy with selling in mind (though I do sell things I don't like), so I don't have any particular feeling on how this part might play out.

In Japan there has been over the years, some attempts to do away with used game sales. I don't know specifics, but I remember that "NO RESALE" icon that was on the back cover of Japanese Dreamcast games, and probably others of the same general era. I don't know if there was any legal backing to that or just was an expression of what someone wanted, but it was definitely there.

 

[Dai]

I'm pretty sure there are reports suggesting that 75-85% of PlayStation sales are now digital

There are, but those numbers are skewed and misleading.

Here's Sony's most recent financial data. Look at page 12 for the data that the gaming media have been copy-pasting for clickbait articles. It does indeed show that 78% of full game sales (ie. not including DLC or microtransactions) were digital in the 2025 financial year, but there's no sub-division for paid vs free games. If you've ever downloaded a free-to-play game from PSN, you'll notice that you're emailed a receipt as if you purchased something. It's still counted as a sale, but it just happens to have a £0 value. Free-to-play games (with only a few exceptions ) typically don't have physical editions, so people aren't choosing digital for those games; it's the only option. Likewise, paid games that don't have physical editions (ie. most games that cost less than £40) don't indicate a customer preference for digital; it's just the only option.

Look at the revenue table on the same page and it gets even muddier. The figures include the full yen value of first-party games, but only the royalties earned from third-party. This is significant because Sony earns about double the royalty percentage from digital sales of a third-party game vs physical. So if the actual number of units of third-party games sold was, for example, a 50/50 split between digital and physical, that would mean Sony reporting double the revenue for digital vs physical. This is why it's in Sony's interest to kill the option of physical sales; they make more money per unit sold.

Another factor skewing sales in favour of digital is the short shelf life of physical games. Go onto a game retailer site like ShopTo that doesn't have a third-party marketplace, and look up a few AA games that released three or more years ago. Odds are they will be listed as either limited availability, on back order, or sold out. Unless you're buying AAA or buying in the first year, options to buy new physical copies from places that will count towards Sony's stats start to dry up quickly.

It gets even more depressing when you look at how the shape of the digital marketplace for games has warped over the last 15 years or so. The shift in emphasis from selling complete products to offering free-to-download enticements to get people hooked on infinite gacha slot machines is the change from companies wanting customers to wanting addicts. Platform exclusives aren't the main event anymore; they're just the bait to get people to buy a console, download 'free' games, and start pumping royalties into the platform-holder's pocket from getting hooked on microtransactions. Imagine a table in a restaurant: on one side is a gourmet meal with a £70 price tag, and on the other side are some lines of white powder with a hand-written post-it note that reads, "The first hit is free." One is there to get you through the door, the other to keep you paying forever.

Platform holders are heavily incentivised to prefer digital sales over physical. Consumer preference isn't part of the equation.

 

[Aion]

Regarding the cost of gaming ballooning, we never needed hyper realistic graphics and all that jazz. At all.

Sony's two most recent successes sum it up best: Astro Bot, which only came to exist because the tech demo for the PS5 pad was so popular; becoming a success almost by accident. It prioritised experimental fun and performance so cost 'only' $50-75 million. And Korea's Stellar Blade, which wasn't subject to 'sexy women in video games is sexist' bubble Western development is subject to, cost $30-50 million simply because it was made in Korea instead of the obscenely expensive U-S-of-A. TLoU2 cost $220 million, for reference...
You would think this a win for Sony: a new, popular IP. However, gaming like Hollywood is this almost surreal place where the money people are forced to try to profit whilst pushing the... correct messaging (which the majority of their customers reject) by making sure anything appealing to men is considered toxic. So, they lost Stellar Blade, and now it's getting a sequel not tied to Sony. Great success~

Sony are a mess of their own making, much like Naughty Dog. Their studios seem compelled to work under DEI guidelines, with things such as women depicted uglier than their irl motion captured actresses. That, and men replaced by women or watered down so they're less toxic/white. They narrow the escapism gap by going for a depressing level realism that kills any semblance of creativity or fun; so much so that you may as well watch a moviefilm. Then, they still expect people to pick up the slack when these games inevitably flop.

On top of all that, they're utterly determined to cash-in on the GTAV/Fortnite monies, so keep trying to make live-service games. I have no pity for them, nor their soulless statement about costs/market trends.

There are, but those numbers are skewed and misleading.

If you've ever downloaded a free-to-play game from PSN, you'll notice that you're emailed a receipt as if you purchased something. It's still counted as a sale, but it just happens to have a £0 value. Free-to-play games (with only a few exceptions ) typically don't have physical editions, so people aren't choosing digital for those games; it's the only option. Likewise, paid games that don't have physical editions (ie. most games that cost less than £40) don't indicate a customer preference for digital; it's just the only option.

This is actually very interesting to me, as I was always left bemused as to why I'd be given a receipt for something I hadn't paid for. The same is true of PS4-PS5 upgrades: you 'purchase' the upgrade, and get a receipt, so essentially if they're counting those in the numbers for every physical copy with an upgrade there's a digital 'purchase' alongside it.

Kids these days only play Fortnite, Genshin, Rocket League etc. Even I've played the latter. The numbers that would've downloaded those three alone would out-strip the majority of games people actually buy digitally, because they're FREE*. So if the 78% includes those attempts to create addicts, welp...

Spoiler: TLTR

Good on you for not going as defensive as I would, and my apologies for the delay responding--laziness, as I mentioned, is one of the three deadly sins.

Commenting on your username was a low blow--just know, 'tis my earnest wish for you to fly free*ly, once more. And thankfully you are likely not Spanish, else the pig reference likely wouldn't have gone in the direction of robots/humans -> humans/pigs & The Matrix... FYI, I didn't intend for the needlessly grim pig mention to be quite so... on the . Don't get me wrong, t'would be fantastic if 'twas all a dream and a red pill could awaken meee from reality, but alas: there exists only one escape using pills, red or blue... although they're usually white and lead to black.

It seemed terribly dull, for everyone just to post their tltr then flee (as is the modern internet way), so despite us not disagreeing in principle, my poking you with my e-stick is more a case of noting your acceptance; almost reading like you were defending the inevitable, despite highlighting the negatives. That with your friends mention - on an anime forum, no less! - made me curious if you are younger than the 30-50+ average on 'ere, and if you indeed are a product of your time.

We shall all have our rants, then gradually acceptance will set in and a new thing to be outraged over will emerge, for that too is human nature, and money talks stronger than words. GTAVI is going to sell more than any game in history. And heck, I am no saint, for I have wasted plenty of gils digitally, including getting Black Myth Wukong (as it was from China/no physical initially) with its UE5 port woes (I dread to think how GTAVI will run). However, there is one point you made that caught mein eye...

You say 'tis more convenient to get your game day 0/1, 12am. Let's play a thought experiment, and go back to when buying games full price digitally was in its infancy--long before the YOLO/HOLO(?) nature of micro-transactions and paying £70 for nothing tangible was not the norm: If not for the conditioning over time, and knowing no better, would it not be rather inconvenient to not just wait for Royal Mail on the day of release or GASP the day after to actually, y'know, possess the game?

You would readily give up all resale value (at least half, 75% if sell as soon as complete), and a physical object you can hold/caress... for waiting what could be as little as hours... maybe a day! Two max. Retailers tend to send a day or two early, using 24hr post. Money does not grow on trees, yet younglings due to social media require instant gratification. T'would be absurd... if not for GTAV, Fortnite et el normalising spending £100's to own nadda and brainwashing kids into thinking spending money is gaming.

To clarify, I am not saying this is all a conspiracy by gaming's SEELE from Eva - as I am envisioning you are imagining - so much as the industry deciding we would go digital-only long before the numbers lined up. In every lie there is a truth, and real world events in recent years have shown that even conspiracies can be truer than fiction. But here, 'tis a case of vested interests. We are not in the console war era where unique hardware monstrosities such as the PS3 exist: the PS5/Xbox run the same games, roughly the same. All e-stores share sale pricing. Exclusives - until Microsoft desperately clawed back E-Day and Sony stalled porting its exclusives to Steam - had until recently become a thing of the past. Coexistence is the order of the day, for the greater good... of £££.

The dominoes falling in quick succession, from Rockstar announcing GTAVI digi-only, to Sony doing something I don't recall them ever doing before (even for their exclusives) by forcing a VI advertisement on the PS5 dashboard and changing their app icon, before announcing discs endeth 2028... 'tis deeply disconcerting. That, and Microsoft leaking that their new console will ofc be digital, too... BUTT unlike Sony, you'll somehow be able to copy your discs data. It's been planned for a wee while that the biggest game evar would trigger/justify all this bollox. As well as increasing game pricing to £80, albeit watered down to the best edition (there were rumblings of this since last year, even).

TLTR: As you say, your point of view is that of a bottom(up), and mine is a top(down) view. That is a very accurate summary. We don't disagree so much as are looking it at from differing perspectives. I respect that. And on that note, I shall shut up.

 

[cfx]

Another factor skewing sales in favour of digital is the short shelf life of physical games. Go onto a game retailer site like ShopTo that doesn't have a third-party marketplace, and look up a few AA games that released three or more years ago. Odds are they will be listed as either limited availability, on back order, or sold out. Unless you're buying AAA or buying in the first year, options to buy new physical copies from places that will count towards Sony's stats start to dry up quickly.

This is definitely the case, and in my experience how long you can get some games physically after release is even shorter than that. I did not buy my PS5 until November 2025 and wasn't previously planning to get one at all, so I had not bought any games for it other than just shortly before after I had decided to get one. So over the next few months I tried to get everything already released that I wanted.

I buy a lot of Japanese imports, which I typically get from CDJapan. One game, that I ordered in December 2025 that had released in April 2025, was canceled from my order as unobtainable. This happened with some others that were only around a year old. I managed to get what I wanted in some cases buying a Limited Edition that was still available instead of a standard, or via Playasia who still had something in stock or at their supplier that wasn't available to CDJapan.

I get it, especially with smaller developers and publishers--it's a risk to order large quantities and then have to sit on them if they don't sell, and digital gives them a way out since the games are still available after there is no more physical.

I preorder everything that I know I want, but there's still games I only realize sometime after release that I wanted after all. Between now and January 2028, I'm going to be very sure I'm getting everything as early as possible because things could possibly be made in smaller quantities, and/or just sell out quicker because of everyone else like me having FOMO about it all.

That's another thing--limited editions with nice extras like artbooks, soundtrack CDs, etc. will mostly become a thing of the past. A few companies might do those "LE without a game" sets like Koei Tecmo has done for some recent games mainly because of Steam I think, but I don't expect small publishers that have been doing LEs to all adopt that practice. I previously bought almost no LEs unless it happened to be a case due to a sale price it was not much more expensive, but having to buy a few lately to just get a game I've sort of gotten attached to them so that's another thing I will miss, as well as the often nice cover art that games have.

 

[BrokenPhoenix]

Here's Sony's most recent financial data. Look at page 12 for the data that the gaming media have been copy-pasting for clickbait articles. It does indeed show that 78% of full game sales (ie. not including DLC or microtransactions) were digital in the 2025 financial year, but there's no sub-division for paid vs free games. If you've ever downloaded a free-to-play game from PSN, you'll notice that you're emailed a receipt as if you purchased something. It's still counted as a sale, but it just happens to have a £0 value. Free-to-play games (with only a few exceptions ) typically don't have physical editions, so people aren't choosing digital for those games; it's the only option. Likewise, paid games that don't have physical editions (ie. most games that cost less than £40) don't indicate a customer preference for digital; it's just the only option.

It is definitely ambiguous whether free to play game downloads are included in those numbers you highlighted. My question would be: if £0 game transactions are included in those numbers - wouldn't a user base of around 125m users generate more than 76.1m individual game sales over 3 months, if that number did include all those £0 game purchases? I feel £0 purchases of Fortnite, Rocket League, etc, would mean that figure would be a lot bigger.

And I would ask - why aren't those games under £40 getting retail physical releases anymore? I would argue it's because printing physical copies at bulk for those tier of games isn't profitable anymore, as customer purchasing habits have changed. Same thing happened with the Blu-ray market when streaming first came along - then the boutique distributors came along and essentially created a new market for enthusiasts and collectors as the mainstream audience went toward streaming. And we already have that in the video game market with boutique labels like LRG, for example.

Look at the revenue table on the same page and it gets even muddier. The figures include the full yen value of first-party games, but only the royalties earned from third-party. This is significant because Sony earns about double the royalty percentage from digital sales of a third-party game vs physical. So if the actual number of units of third-party games sold was, for example, a 50/50 split between digital and physical, that would mean Sony reporting double the revenue for digital vs physical. This is why it's in Sony's interest to kill the option of physical sales; they make more money per unit sold.

You're not wrong - Sony definitely have an interest in pushing digital games as they make far more profit from them compared to a physical game. I definitely agree with your point there.

However, the point that I would fall against is that it's the market/consumer that have given them the green light to do so. I'm not sure we can explain the massive gap between physical sales and digital sales with simply £0 F2P game transactions and indies. Even accounting for the messy definitions Sony uses and the third party royalties, the fact that it's around a gap of 8x between digital and physical suggests to me that there has definitely been a major shift.

And it's not just the numbers I see it in, as I said in my previous comment; retailers that sell physical video games are dying/are dead. Supermarkets stopped selling physical games, etc. So when I take everything in totality, I can't help but believe the market has genuinely shifted.

Another factor skewing sales in favour of digital is the short shelf life of physical games. Go onto a game retailer site like ShopTo that doesn't have a third-party marketplace, and look up a few AA games that released three or more years ago. Odds are they will be listed as either limited availability, on back order, or sold out. Unless you're buying AAA or buying in the first year, options to buy new physical copies from places that will count towards Sony's stats start to dry up quickly.

I think that's just the nature of how physical games sell though, and also how retailers operate. The vast bulk of most new game's sales will be in that first year and then sales will dry up. Retailers won't carry stock of physical games that are no longer selling.

I don't think the few thousand people who were "forced" to buy digital because ShopTo or TGC is no longer selling a physical copy would skew the 78%/85% statistic that much. Plus, physical buyers (at least in my case) would first check the second hand market (e.g., eBay, CEX, Vinted, etc) and buy a used physical copy of the game (if Amazon, TGC, ShopTo, etc, no longer stocked it) - which of course Sony can't track in their data.

So I don't think the relatively short shelf life of video games "forces" that many people to buy digital and inflate the numbers.

Platform holders are heavily incentivised to prefer digital sales over physical. Consumer preference isn't part of the equation.

Definitely agree that Sony and the like are incentivised to prefer digital sales over physical because of the higher profit margins. However, I'd say they can only move forward with stopping physical discs because of the change in consumer behaviour/preference - so consumer preference is part of the equation imo.

Go back to the launch of the PS4 and digital sales were nearly a non factor for Sony in their sales numbers. If the market had continued to show that same heavy preference for physical games/discs, then there's no way that Sony would be announcing they are stopping PS disc production.

Essentially, I think both things are true. Yes, Sony benefit from and are incentivised by an all-digital future. But also, the market/consumers at large have shifted toward digital games too (the same way the masses shifted from DVDs/Blu-ray to streaming) - giving Sony the green light to eventually scrap PS discs.

 

[Vashdaman]

Yeah I can well imagine it's a combination of being both by design and the current trajectory of consumer trends. I'm sure eliminating the second hand market has probably been a deliberate goal of publishers for a long time, but I also guess they were winning that battle anyway, thanks to consumers increasingly buying digital, especially since Covid, and it's probably at the point where even discounting the impact of destroying the second hand market it doesn't seem worth it to Sony to keep discs going.

That's my guess but I'm not really clever enough to know what came first, chicken or egg, and I don't think it necessarily matters. What does matter is that it seems likely to just be another enshittification of modern life, and so is a depressing, if foreseeable, development at a time when so much else in the world also seems to be going in the same enshittified direction for ordinary workers and consumers and artists and enjoyers of art. This just feels like another blow. Maybe it wouldn't be as bad if Sony tried to justify this and sell the benefits of this to us, will the cost of games reduce? Will they pay their workers more? Will this enable more experimental creative games to get made? Maybe it will, I don't know, but it's also not hard to imagine all those savings/extra profit will just go straight into shareholders and CEO pockets.

Also, maybe this is wishful thinking on my part, but I think Sony could be being short sighted with this. There's the obvious huge brand damage this will do, which they are no doubt hoping will blow over as we all accept our fates as digital renters of their products. But also, increasingly it feels to me like young people are starting to swing away from digital online only life, they're starting to get a bit bored of that now and are craving something more tangible and "real". You see a lot of young kids with things like CD players these days. Maybe that's a fringe rejection of the direction of travel, I don't know, but Sony could be being overly hubristic here.

In any case I'll miss physical media and I'm really glad I was born just in time to be able to enjoy it throughout my youth. As sad as it might sound, browsing game shops, whether small local indies you'd build a rapport with, or huge multi media megastores was a real highlight of my youth. Seeing all the games lined up on shelves or behind counters, or the exotic imported curios under glass, and just pouring over it all. Feeling the weight of it in my hands as I brought it home, iching to open it and pour over the manual before I even got back. Oh and new manual smell, someone bottle it and I'll buy it as a scent! Over many years slowing building your budding gaming collection from a few scraps into a veritable shrine of nerd.

Taking my favourite games into school to lend to friends who couldn't afford it but who I wanted to experience them and to talk about them with, knowing full well the game might go "missing" mysteriously, but that only meant they liked it so I wasn't even mad. One of my schoolmates used to pack his GameCube into his bag to bring in, as far as I could tell just so he could demonstrate carrying the Cube around by it's little built in handle, like it was a goddamn lunch box or something! Marvellous!

Even during my days as a young weedhead, I could sometimes score some great games in exchange for a bit of the ol wacky baccy. I once traded ten quids worth for an original DS! Back of the net! And speaking of physical items, my god wasn't the the original DS a chunky slab of tactile gorgeousness before the sleeker lite versions!

I know this is pure nostalgia overdrive. But there's zero chance games would have meant anything close as much to me as they did growing up if they were devoid a physical presence.