I wonder how much longer we’ll be able to buy 4K Blu-rays then…
There is no GOG or Steam for movies. “Digital copies” are just extended rentals for TV and movies, so anyone revolting against streaming price increases are either pirating or moving to physical, because it’s all that’s left. It pushed me back to physical, for sure, so there’s still money to be made there.
Maybe if they got rid of DRM. It sounds like Blu-Ray, especially UHD would be too much pain on Linux. And anyway, all the solutions are just based around usage of leaked keys (which will keep getting revoked).
How come CDs don’t need DRM? Perhaps they didn’t think of it in the past (before CD-R), but I’d say it keeps proving itself useless over the years.
CDs just work, and will just work.
Leaked Blu-Ray player keys can and will eventually get revoked. So the best bet is to just rip it to a HDD/NAS ASAP.
But at that point it’s just unnecessary steps to obtain same result as torrenting what someone else already ripped.Blu Rays are a pain on Linux, but MakeMKV rips these discs pretty universally. It sucks that it has to be done this way, but I still get my videos in full quality, well above what streaming services send me, and they can’t take it from me. In my experience, though I don’t pirate much anymore, seeders don’t have much desire to seed the full uncompressed video, let alone the special features. And you’re correct; CDs didn’t have DRM, because the invention of the format predated their desire to make DRM. DVDs had very basic DRM, but it’s now been thoroughly broken wide open.
Maybe for a while longer? Depends on what consumers do.
The last reason to own a console just died.
Fuck you Sony. Fuck valve too, completely destroyed ownership of games.
I’m okay with no physical on PC, because there are ways to maintain control over your games, whether legal or not.
You can’t sell them for money.
That is true. However, you can acquire most of them for no money.
Yes, and that’s relevant because you can’t in a walled garden.
There are still DRM-free games. Call it just buying a license if you want, but they can’t be taken away from you.
Nobody is buying my old copies of games from gog.
Nobody bought my old copy of Uncharted 4 either. I had to give it away for free.
I literally sold mine a month after release when I finished for something like 85% of new on Amazon.
Consoles are by a long shot the cheapest way to play games unless you want a billion throughs. This isn’t some imaginary scenario. The are still rental services for discs. But yeah keep on simping for corpos because you aren’t clever enough to see the difference.
DRM-free works for that use case when sales go deep enough. Then, if you decide it’s not something you want to keep forever, you’re not out of any more money than that 15% you got back. I thought I wanted to keep Uncharted 4 for a while, and then it got a PC version. By the time I wanted to get rid of it a handful of years ago, it was worth a few dollars at most, and I got not bites for it. These things lose their value quite quickly. As far as ownership goes, DRM-free works better when you don’t plan on selling, because you can freely copy it and back it up long after the degradation of the medium it’s stored on.
Consoles are the cheapest way to play games until one line crosses another line. They have subscription fees for online; they have less competition so the sales aren’t as good; they have smaller libraries; their convenience has diminished and their entry prices have risen; there are mandatory costs on things like peripherals and getting higher frame rates on your back catalogue; etc. In general, the more games you play, the less likely it is you’re saving money on consoles. I feel for you having lost your use case, but there’s a reason I’m personally okay with losing physical, and it’s not because I’m okay with losing ownership.
Well what’s the point then. Might as well go over to PC gaming. The only real reason to stay with consoles was the physical disks.
Everything else about consoles is terrible compared to PC, no mods, limited games, limited sales, if any, (looking at you Nintendo), limited control scheme options, can only play games so device doesn’t have a lot of utility, you have to pay for internet access even though you already pay for internet access, no private servers, limited community tools.
The one thing you could say for consoles was that you owned the game. Now that’s gone.
The other advantages were lower price for hardware and not requiring tinkering to get games to run properly. While the price is still lower, it’s a smaller gap than it used to be since everything is ass-expensive now, so less benefit there. The last advantage isn’t even remotely worth all the downsides at this point.
To expand on your point about no tinkering required, the overall UI is also geared for a couch experience. So many people want to just plug in an HDMI cable and go, and consoles make that possible. And I get the desire; I have no regrets about going the PC route but I absolutely understand the whole “I don’t want to sit at a desk when I get home from work” argument. And before anyone talks about putting a PC on the TV, yes it’s possible but it’s not optimized for that kind of experience out of the box.
Very true, and that was also a big reason why I never tried just putting a PC under the TV. Docking the Steam Deck to the TV has shown me that Steam’s Big Picture Mode does a great job giving a console-like experience completely via a controller, though, so that’s where I’m going to be heading once support for PS5 ends.
Is there any reason not to be on PC? Larger libraries, open source, better graphics, larger communities, no extra sub on top of your internet to play with friends.
If we can’t have discs, in my opinion, why have consoles? If you want a console-like experience you can even use distros like SteamOS or Bazzite.
But absolutely fuck Sony and Rockstar and everyone trying to remove our physical media and games. If it weren’t against IP laws and such, I’d love to work for a physical production company who re-makes discs, cartridges, etc to preserve games. I know there are some who do limited runs for indie titles, giving them physical releases they otherwise wouldn’t have.
We need a more chill, less capitalist world.
Also on pc we have DRM Free games on gog that include goodies like soundtracks, manuals , wallpapers and more. Gog is now my favorite store…
💯
Gog is great and all, but it has virtually zero recent major games.
Yeah i hope they improve that, i still buy games on steam if they are newer.
Previously, the reason to not be on PC was a lower upfront cost, being able to sell and trade games, and not having to mess around to get games working. The first one still applies, but much less than in the past, and the second one is being killed outright. Consoles really don’t make much sense over PC any more. If price and not being tech-savvy are big enough issues, just game on a phone.
PCs are (or at least, were) a bit more expensive, they seem more single player focused (in terms of local players) and, let’s face it, owning a gaming PC is a much bigger commitment of time and effort than a console.
Consoles really shined when you could go over to a friend’s house, plug in one box, a few controllers, and have a 4 person couch gaming experience going in less than 5 minutes.
Those were the days…
Now, multiple controllers can be recognized on pc, making local play rather easy.
Streaming options exist through Moonlight, etc, if you don’t want to move your PC to your TV (or fiber optic display cables for lengthy runs)
And with Steam Big Picture or now Bazzite and other distros, you can have a plug and play console-like experience. You can even set up emulators to play classic and arcade games that are no longer available or just aren’t released on console digital storefronts.
If you really get into it, you can even connect fight sticks, arcade controls, even light guns and instrument controllers (r/CloneHero has guides/suggestions) with some recent modern revisions.
Basically, while the closed source platforms kill off usability and titles, the open platform of PC is keeping things alive in some ways.
There’s also a number of outlets reporting that the PlayStation 6 will likely be over $1000
Guess it’ll make the steam machine pricing more attractive 🙃
The current PS5 is more powerful and half the price of a Steam machine.
Totally worth not owning my library and having it taken away at will and remaining on a closed ecosystem.
I’m assuming you’ll go buy some more fifa slot rolls eh?
You think you own your steam games? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I’m assuming you’ll go buy some more TF2 hats or loot crates in CS eh?
I never said I did Sony fanboy.
However, there are DRM free games on steam, which you will own forever so long as you have the installer.
Same for GOG games.
And steam keeps the download files available even when a game is pulled from the storefront. I can still download games in my library that can’t be purchased anymore.
Stop trying to push a narrative you cuck, I’m talking about more than just Steam, but Steam alone is still a better value than Sony. And Sony raising their prices and removing content from users libraries just makes it all the more worth it.
Cope more.
Sony fanboy? 🤣 I think Sony are a terrible company, and PlayStation is anti-consumer with terrible hardware and games. I’m a pc and Xbox player. Haven’t owned a PS since the PS3, and stopped using it a few years after release.
Both PlayStation and Xbox allow you to download games that have been delisted if you own them. Have since forever. You should do a bit more research before you speak.
There are a surprising amount of DRM free games on steam, is valve perfect? Fuck no, at the end of the day they are a company that only want money, and as much as they made my favorite games from my childhood, they did have a gigantic hand in normalizing loot crates. But with that list in combination with my GOG library, if I back up the install files I’m golden.
Considering the current price of the Pro and RAM and storage prices predicted to continue rising for years to come, that’s a given.
I get if they reduced disc output but fully ending is nasty work and stripping away consumer choice. There tons of factors of why people have been going digital lately and I still do a mix of both. I don’t trust the big 3 with a digital only landscape even Switch’s 2 gamekey cards still have issues. I guess the good times are slowly ending.
It’s going to make companies like Limited Run and Video Games Plus more important. You’ll end up waiting a LONG time for a physical release, though.
Since it’s guaranteed the next gen of consoles won’t have disc drives, they’re going to be gone as well.
I would argue that DRM-free has always been what we really need rather than the physical media, particularly in the era of patching.
True. but also, some places that don’t have reliable Internet access rely on physical media. They’re cutting out part of the market entirely.
I read PS physical sales are currently about 15% of the market. That was about 70 million sales in 2025. Seems dumb to cut that out, but maybe it will work out for them.
It seems dumb to us. But I’m sure they’re (selfishly) considering the cost of manufacturing and distributing physical discs vs the number of people who can and will switch to digital if that’s all that’s available.
Seems risky, since the video game market is in an unprecedented place economically now. It may just be that the old AAA model just doesn’t make sense any more. I’d welcome a collapse of it, but am interested to see what the market can bear.
I forgot about that part. I hope people get them to rethink this.
It says in the article that Sony (and other platforms too) have seen a significant drop in purchases of physical media. So I really think they just don’t care about those customers that rely on it and Even with some backlash this is likely to go ahead (same as with Blu-ray disks which are also being sunsetted). I can’t say I’m surprised that they’re doing this given that they want to stop manufacturing Blu-rays altogether.
The issue, normies dont understand DRM free digital media. Once its digital its like its invisible. A disc or a tape, is so easy to understand, you just HAVE it and it works.
My tapes from the 80s/90s just work when I put them in. Does a disc game or digital game from even 2018 do that? Likely not.
Does a disc game or digital game from even 2018 do that?
Yes. When it comes to Sony, any PS4 game (so from 2013 and on) will work on a PS4 or PS5 with a disc drive.
I meant for PC, sorry
Ah, with PC it varies. There can definitely be issues when you go back to games made for Windows 7 and earlier, for example. If a game is popular enough, it’s almost guaranteed to have fan-made patches to work on modern hardware, at least.
Even without a game being popular, if you sort of know what you are doing, you can “patch” it yourself via relatively easy to use tools:
https://github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper
There is even a patch to enable 16 bit emulation support on x64 Windows (sometimes needed for installers or some weird Windows 3.1 game ports to Windows 95).
I’m with you on that which is why I love GOG’s efforts.
Without physical disk I might as well get a Gabecube instead.
At least once the next Gabecube “2” comes out, the old one won’t become a paperweight and could become my parents next computer.I predict they will push ps6 as cloud streaming console.
It aligns with all the other shit decisions they’re making
They won’t. Latency is a bitch. There is a reason why geforce now is still a niche thing, despite offering a free tier.
Yeah, the tech won’t be there yet for enough people. If civilization (or the PS brand) doesn’t collapse, who knows for the PS7 and beyond?
I’m out. I would never buy a console without physical media.
I’m with you, this is an insanely ballsy move. One of the biggest pros of a console is that you could still buy physical games and trade it with friends or sell it used to someone else. If everything is going digital, what’s the point?
Here we even have a local chain that rents you physical games for a week at a time…
It’s not ballsy at all. They’ve basically got no competition in the high-end console space, and the overwhelming majority of console buyers only buy digital already.
An exorbitant entry level price for consoles has never been tested at current prices, because all of them had sane prices for years and so have install bases that got them at those prices. How will it go if the minimum buy-in is over $1000 with no way to mitigate the cost later on with used games? We’re gonna find out!
Again though - if you want a game console you’ll buy a PlayStation because it’s the only real option, and it’ll be cheaper than an Xbox.
Bu the time it comes out, people will be well accustomed to paying exorbitant prices for these things. It sucks but it’ll be the norm by then. Prices are never going back down, because history has shown us they never do.
It’s not a matter of them wanting it, the issue is whether a large number of people will be able to actually afford it at that price. Consoles thrive on accessibility.
They will, because it’s the only option and is “the” gaming brand.
I’ll be watching the number of consoles sold a year after launch with interest. It will of course sell out at launch regardless of price.
For me it’s called a library.
On a side note, while I very much understand people’s general hate of DRM, I am curious if there’d be interest in a digital library service that lets people borrow video games to download with lite-DRM systems attached (something small, to make certain people don’t borrow the whole catalog, and then crack them on the spot)
I’m sure it’s easy for people to come up with gripes about such a system, or any use of DRM, and would express their preference for physical, but: Physical games prioritize/benefit consoles over PCs, and prioritize AAA games for which the costs of large disc printing runs make more sense. You’re not likely to find many copies of Mina the Hollower at libraries.
Realistically, with half-finished games on launch and mandatory day one patches, this won’t be a meaningful shift in how much you actually “own” your games, but dropping this 2 days after they deleted 550 movies that folks had bought and paid for and ostensibly “owned” from the ecosystem is a real bad look.
The problem with discs vs. Never was how much of the game you own or the fact that you can play the same disc 20 years down the road. It boils down to the fact that you can no longer sell the game you own after finishing it.
Or even just lend it to a friend. When I was a kid everyone in my group would get a different game and share them. We barely would have been able to play anything if we didn’t share
See, this is the real problem. Anybody with an MBA is going to look at your statement and think about all the money they didn’t get because they’re too fucking stupid to realize that you would not have bought more games if you had to buy multiple copies. It’s the same thing with like pirating music they used to talk about how much money they’ve lost, and I used to think no I just wouldn’t have bought that album. So they’ve spent all this time trying to figure out how to chase down dollars they never would’ve gotten to begin with.
Yeah the reality is I would have just read (more) books from the library and played fewer video games
I don’t think reselling is the big issue to me; just ownership. Some high-guarantee method of both retaining and controlling the product in question, which is often failed by our technical measures and server checks.
I’m fine with digital, even when it prevents reselling. I’m just less fine with it when license holders have the right to say “No, I’m done!” and pull their side of the contract.
yeah but the way they “release” games the disc is just a series of wget requests for patch files and if they take that endpoint down the disc is worthless.
Yes, it’s less than ideal, but still preferable to having NO way to sell or trade a license while the servers are still up. Games are becoming too big to fit on a single Bluray anyway.
true indeed.
Not only selling, but buying, lending or even gifting!
That’s correct, most of my collection on XboX 360 and PS4 comes from second hand games.
We used to finish games. No update bullshit. A game was done when it was done. Humans can do this shit. Capitalism erodes our skills and our brains.
Just look at crash on ps1. Amazing.
Yes, but also no… For instance there were definitely bugs in Mario 64 that were corrected in later editions of Mario 64 like Mario 64DD and the one that came out on the DS. One very famous bug that’s been corrected is the ability to backwards long jump up the stairs in the upper section of the castle before having enough stars to climb the stairs.
Obviously these weren’t game breaking bugs in the same way that day one patches are fixing things, but it’s also not exactly correct to say it didn’t happen in the before time.
Right, it happened, but Usually they were small bugs.
I’m referring more to unnessecary updating every week . i hate that shit
I would rather a game that is supported for years with new content, updates, and fixes over one that isn’t. This thinking that “games were done back in the olden days, now they’re not” is dumb. They were just smaller, and they often had lots of bugs that could never be fixed.
Nah. I’ll take a finished game with a few bugs over a "weekly update ".
Also, game updates aren’t even bug fixes a lot of the time, its doing some idiotic menu reorganizing or adding a new loot box. Games dont need any of that. They just have to be good.
And also, your game that is "supported for years " with its weekly updates is dead in the water after 5 years often when its no longer "profitable " and with bugs still unfixed. So does it really make sense ?
Again, I can throw crash in my ps1 and play through it with 0 issue and 0 internet. Can The Crew do that? Can any game do that in 30 years? No.
So you are against updates just in principle lol. You’d rather games not get better because of a misguided idea that updates being a thing mean games aren’t “finished” at release.
You also seem to think that only online-only games get frequent updates. That’s not true. Take a game like vampire survivors for example. It must have had a hundred updates by now, and it’s a single player offline game (though they also recently added online multiplayer in a free update). That game will be playable in 30 years time too. Why wouldn’t it?
You are mistaking games that require a persistent online connection as “games that get updates”.
Basically yes, because many are unnecessary updates. I don’t care about them. Its actually cringe for me when I open a game and see “gahhh NOW what did they fricken change ??”. For many games, its usually not a good thing either, just from games I’ve played. Thats of course not always true. A bug fix here and there isnt the worst. But it rarely stops there.
"Constant updates " and "required online for single player " are often (usually) tied together. They can be separate yes, and those examples exist and are fine.
I still stand by the fact that there were millions of games made before constant internet and updates were a thing, and maaaaany of them are very good. I mean, I also hate when software devs think moving around all our menu buttons and shit (also introducing more bugs) and re releasing a product makes it “better” when it worked just fine for years. Its like they feel the need to change unnessesary shit, probably because the CEO told their boss it needs to be done so line go up. Who knows. Changing stuff for the sake of change does nothing.
They’re dropping this news now so people forget about it in a few days when they all pick up their pitchforks and go after Microsoft for the upcoming layoffs.
The funny thing is the main people going after MS will be people that want Xbox to die anyway, leaving Sony free to do things like this.
I’m more likely to bite the bullet on the cost of a Steam Machine than over a PS6.
Even without games on disc I use it for my movies on disc all the time. I will not be replacing my PS5 with something without a disc drive.
Isn’t a PS5 more powerful than the steam machine?
No. They’re about equal, and OS updates since the reviews were made have bumped up the SM’s performance
Guess who’s getting rid of movies you bought on Playstation?
natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends
yet all of the comments below their post prefer physical
So a grand total of 100 people out of 8 billion want physical, absolutely a reason for them to continue
Edit: I don’t support this btw but it was always going this way
yet all of the comments below their post prefer physical
Comment sections are not a representative sample. These are people who actively follow Sony news and care enough about physical media to leave angry comments.
I prefer physical media myself because I’m a middle-aged fogey, but if you want to see how PlayStation players as a whole are buying games, you have to look at Sony’s financials. Since Sony are a publicly traded company, those are publicly available
The relevant data is on page 12 of this supplemental document
In FY 2025, Sony made G¥121,159 on physical game sales and G¥949,799 on digital game sales. Those numbers exclude DLC, which is listed separately (and combined with lootboxes). In short, Sony make 7.8 times as much on sales of digital games (excluding DLC and microtransactions!) as they do on physical games. To put it another way, physical game sales make up just 11% of Sony’s revenue from game sales (again, excluding DLC and microtransactions). And that figure has been trending downward ever since the PS3.
The obvious caveat here is that lots of indie games never get physical releases, which skews the ratio toward digital. That’s true, but the same page of the document shows that of games that get physical releases, 76% of sales are still digital.
The fact of the matter is we’re a dying breed. Most people today either prefer the convenience of digital games or are just indifferent. Comment sections may say one thing, but actual data shows a massive trend toward digital games.
If I’m downloading digital games I’m downloading them from indie studios onto my computer, and not through a console.
Considering that Sony are practically a monopoly in the disc market, this could be interpreted as exiting blu-ray entirely. If they’re not behind it, nobody is.
This is games only, nothing to do with movies.
Also physical movies have been dead for years anyway, no one buys them. Even less people buy them than physical games, and barely anyone buys them.
10000% of nothing is still nothing.
Remember when XB1 was going to be digital-only and Sony roasted it so badly Microsoft had to walk it back?
Sad thing is, I always figured this was going to be inevitable. I just didn’t think it would happen this soon.
Microsoft has the chance to do the funniest thing.
They won’t, of course. They’d rather shoot themselves in the foot than do something smart.
The next Xbox is a PC, it’s already 99% digital only.
PlayStation players are already basically digital only, have been for years.
The people complaining are the vocal extreme minority.
Hilariously still up on their YT, and rightfully getting roasted in the comments
I just didn’t think it would happen this soon.
I hate to be the one to tell you this but…
That was 13 years ago. That announcement is almost high school aged.
And 13 years before that announcement was the start of the PS2 era.
That is why you need a strong competition. Unfortunately Sony doesn’t have one, so they can do whatever they want.
I don’t get the fascination with physical disc for modern consoles, it seems like the worst of both worlds.
The only way to own your games is to have a DRM free installer on a platform that has backwards compatibility as a goal/feature (so not MacOS).
PS2/PS1 discs sure, but from my understanding modern discs don’t function like they did back in the day.
