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I can’t speak to market trends, but I can say this 100% makes my PS5 my last Sony console. I’ve bought every one, and the only reason I continue to buy them is so I can collect exclusives on disc for my collection.
A digital only console is just a bad, expensive gaming PC. I already have a good expensive gaming PC, so I’ll just buy games digitally there.
While I applaud your decision, the market has spoken - 85%+ of all console game sales are digital. The overwhelming majority of people don’t care about physical games, especially in a time when the physical copies don’t even contain the full game due to storage constraints.
I’ve been digital-only since the day they made all games available digitally on the Xbox 360, because I don’t trade or re-sell games, ever, and I much prefer the benefits of digital. Most people are like me these days. It sucks for the people that aren’t, but they’re going to have to just move on or abandon their hobby.
I do buy digital and have for decades, but primarily for PC. I don’t for console because that’s the last thing I wanted a console for. I have no intention of abandoning the hobby, but this is my last reason to buy a PlayStation. They offer nothing that isn’t done better on a gaming PC.
I saw the 85% stat they are pushing. I honestly don’t believe it. I strongly believe they are pumping that number up by counting PlayStation Plus redemptions and smaller games in that total. I would be much more interested to see what the actual Physical vs. Digital sales are for a single new release title on day one. I would guess the split is much closer to 70/30. That might be higher in markets where internet access is less robust. This will also piss off retailers and distributors, which now are expected to sell low-margin consoles without high margin games. They chose such a far off date in purpose, to see the feedback and test the waters. I doubt this will come to fruition. Physical media is seeing a resurgence as trust for these companies to maintain services is at an all time low.
On that note, companies need to be careful taking industry wide trends and extrapolating from them with no nuance. That’s why I worded my first comment carefully. I am not anti-Digital at all, but I buy a console for collecting exclusives. I have hundreds of digital Steam games and some digital PS5 games. You know how many digital PS6 games I’ll have? Zero, because I won’t own one. Like backwards compatibility, the benefit of it can’t be quantified by how much time people use it vs. cost of development. Physical media is a draw, even if it is not always taken advantage of. I’m not boycotting, I’m genuinely no longer interested.
This is the kind of decision that looks great on a balance sheet when you have no competition. But when your hardcore audience stops buying, collectors that buy extra releases and collectors editions stop collecting, retailers stop pushing because they can only sell one low margin box, and your competitors see your weakness and double down on it, it might not turn out so great.
The 85% stat isn’t a lie - it’s in their own financials that they release to shareholders, and they’re actually one of publishers with the least digital uptake. Xbox, Ubisoft, EA, etc all also release these figures and they’re higher. You can go to Sonys investor relations portal and check the figures out for yourself.
Physical media is not making a resurgence. It’s getting lower and lower every single year.
Sony will not abandon this plan because they have no reason to. It won’t affect their sales at all.
Also we don’t know how this will affect retail yet, that all depends on if they allow retailers to sell below the PS Store prices.
I didn’t say it was a lie, I said I think it’s inflated the way I already explained. Also, the fact that they are lower than other publishers indicates they will see a bigger impact from this than others.
Physical media is making a resurgence in other areas. Vinyl, DVD, 4K BluRay. Not a big one, but it’s on a backswing. I’m not doubting video games are lower every year because they are still in their initial era.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree on the impact. I think the knock-on effect will be bigger than they anticipate. Obviously they agree with you that it won’t impact anything. I think it will, for all the reasons I just went over. It’s not a 1:1 relationship between sale and impact. When people don’t have the console because it doesn’t attract them, they can’t make any sales. So they won’t lose one sale from me, they’ll lose the console sale and dozens of physical and digital games.
This is exactly what Microsoft went through with cutting BC, trying to kill physical media, and trying to play their dominant hand and we all know how that worked out. Turns out it’s more than the sum of its parts. Sony might succeed, it’s a different era. But it certainly gives a lot of weak spots for competitors to target.
It’s not inflated. They’re not counting PS Plus downloads or anything else, unless you’re accusing them of lying to shareholders and breaking many laws.
The amount of people leaving physical media is not being outpaced by those picking it up.
When did Microsoft try to cut BC?
As I’ve explained in other comments, Microsoft was actually the most pro-consumer with their “all digital” plans. They were doing “physical as digital”, with the benefits of physical and digital.
After the recent Sony is deleting your movies you bought crap, I decided I’m never buying a digital game from them ever again. So sounds like it’s my last as well. And I was already 90% digital.
Especially seeing as they tried to do the same thing before and reversed course due to the backlash, but I guess they just don’t care anymore.
Yep. Same. I’ve been a PlayStation guy since my teens and could start buying my own stuff. If that’s the move they want to go with then I have zero issues in dropping them as a whole.
I bought every PlayStation ever released. I will not be buying this one. Consoles are supposed to get cheaper over time. The gaming sector is going to go tits up and I hope it does.
plus people have prioritize money to elsewhere like basic needs, instead of luxury needs.
It’s a historic moment to see an almost 6-year old console appreciate and not depreciate in value over time. Never before seen in the ~40 years of gaming. It’s insane
Value is different than cost. The value continues to plummet, while the cost continues to rise.
Good point. Monetary value then
That’s even scarier, electronics usually devalue way faster than inflation!
They’re also shutting down PS3 and PSVita store access, to add insult to injury.
At some point it doesnt make much sense to support almost dead infrastructure. Probably wasnt making them money anymore.
I mean look at the 3DS, Wii and Wii U…They closed way earlier than Sony. ^(Which is a bad thing done by Nintendo.)
Sure, but that’s why they should be required to maintain it by law, or to provide some other mechanism for long term access.
That’s what the stopkillinggames movement is here for.
What? Rip to my jailbroken Vita that could download psn games I guess.
Don’t forget they also paid $3.6 Billion for Bungie just to shut down their most popular game and put all their hope in their new extraction shooter that’s been struggling. No new games in dev or even green lit. Also they just laid off a bunch of people.
Don’t blame Sony for bungies mess. Sony got absolutely scammed by Bungie because they were desperately and panicking after MS accounted they were buying ABK.
Bungie have been a terrible studio for a decade at least. Microsoft turned them down when Bungie attempted to sell themselves back to them for a fraction of what Sony paid them only a few months later.
Destiny got what it deserved. I can’t believe it lasted as long as it did. I noped after they started charging $40 for a couple maps and a raid labeled as “expansions”. And that was destiny 1. The game was an unbelievable ripoff.
Can’t believe people still stuck with it even after they locked down the legacy content. It’s crazy how much it takes to get people to stop buying enshittified products.
I agree I don’t blame Sony at all. Also I hate myself for it but for me no FPS I’ve played comes close to the fluid gunplay in Destiny and Destiny 2. That is where Bungie always shined for me above everyone else. The rebooted Doom games are a close 2nd. and there are a few indie titles like Turbo Overkill that get close as well. Everything else just doesn’t match up when I get that FPS itch.
This one is more on the Bungie side of things. Bungie got a few lifelines and STILL fumbled.
Imagine if Bungie never “vaulted” (read: deleted) any part of Destiny 2 and we were still able to play the original campaign it shipped with? More people would still be playing Destiny 2 and you’d get plenty more new players without them having to use a guide or YouTube lore videos to get caught up on the story.
Instead of mArathon they’d probably be making a Destiny 3
Oh yeah don’t get me started on Bungie. The are a shell of their former selves. When they split from Activison and it all came out that the mircotransactions was all Bungie’s idea that was my first WTF moment with these guys. They let us believe it was the Corp overlords ruining our game but they did it themselves. Then they did everything they could do to make themselves look profitable for Sony’s acquisition. Just horrible decision after horrible decision.
What really sucks is that Marathon is actually pretty fun.
They just completely fumbled the marketing and launch, the UI needs to be cleaned up, and it doesn’t feel worth it at $40. IDC if it’s a AAA developer, it’s still a pretty small game content wise even if it is fun to play.
I’m a diehard Marathon fan, I dumpster dived for an Apple to play the first two on when I was a kid. I can’t even try the new one because they purposefully broke it on Linux.
This is what happens when their only competitor is a mindless Microslop.
Nintendo carved out their niche and Sony has no chance against them in that market after abandoning AAA and AA single player games in favor of trash service games.
as long as people buy the mainline games like pokemon, and some other well know IP mario and friends,etc. nintendo isnt going to lose customers, eventhough some of them have become slop over the years.
Nintendo makes good AA and AAA games just like they did decades ago.
They don’t believe in discounts or quality analog sticks but their game design is still solid.
Nintendo also doesn’t do mass layoffs. Nintendo provides lifetime employment. Hence why they have released high quality games for decades, because the new generation of devs gets the time to grow and the old generation stays to pass down their knowledge to the next generation.
Nintendo Kyoto is know as a very good employer in Japan.
Consoles were always a walled garden from the very start, very purposefully so, and those things tend to squeeze customers once captured with higher prices and, sooner or later, fully enshittify.
So when consoles originally appeared I just kept gaming on the PC because it was an open platform and the only console I ever had was a WII (the original one) because their controller was at the time innovative, and honestly it wasn’t really worth it.
Then, specifically for the PlayStation there’s Sony, who have a long track record of anti-consumer actions that started when their leadership stopped coming from the Engineering Division and started coming from their Media Division (after they bought a Movie studio in the US), from their electronics becoming locked down and restrictive for users (they’re the ones who came up with Blu-Ray, which was way more locked down to block copying than DVDs were) to the infamous shipping of music CDs with rootkits (the “Sony Rootkit” scandal)
So this increasing enshittification of the PlayStation isn’t at all surprising and suspect it will get even worse than this.
Ultimately I think the PlayStation platform will end up dying.
Just the second great video game crash, not quite a secret landfill of E. T. Games but this is just as bad imo
They’re betting on consumers being too impulsive and stupid to care, and… they’re probably right. Nothing’s stopped them before, this likely isn’t a new line in the sand for them.
I’m not one of those people who pretends they will play a physical disc game for the rest of their life
I do however like physical for two reasons. Firstly, the price, how tf can you justify charging more when you are cutting out all of the middlemen and listing on your own online store. Secondly, resale. I can buy a game, play it and resell.
If the tradeoff on going digital was that games were 50% cheaper, then I’d be happy. I wouldn’t have to hoard games and I’d have the convenience of digital.
Just like self checkout. I’m now doing the work of an employee. So I’ll ring up everything as an apple now, can’t fire me.
Eh. I’m not surprised to see this. But I am happy I built my PC when I did.
Quite frankly I do not feel bad about pirating everything and storing it to my hard drive. If we don’t own it, it’s not stealing.
I’m gonna miss them as they were the only way of playing paid games via Playstation 4 since you couldn’t buy digital games via PS Store if you were living in an unavailable country.
Personally I bought a PS5 only to collect physical games and be able to play them. I’m not paying premium PS prices for temporary, digital access.
I think it’s safe to say this means PS6 will either be digital only, or heavily focused on digital. Which for me is a non-negotiable deal breaker.
PlayStation is pulling off the best marketing campaign Xbox could ever dream of.
PS6 will 100% be digital only. It’s likely directly related and will probably release in Nov. 2028.
This isn’t gonna help XBOX any, they’re even worse and will be doing the same, guaranteed.
Sony only announced this now because of the upcoming Xbox layoff announcement. Typical “get all of your bad news out in front of the competitors worse news so yours is only in the news cycle for a few days” play.
Xbox’s “physical as digital” plans for the Xbox One were amazing. Bet the people who cried about it are now feeling pretty stupid.
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Bye PlayStation. It’s been a good run, but you’re dead to me now.
Closing bluepoint is madness. That studio was really good at remastering games
People don’t care. Most just want to feed on SoMe. A bunch even voted Trump as President - impressed that humas has survived this long
