Playstation is going digital only.

At the beginning of this July, Sony announced that from 2028 they would cease the production of physical games for their Playstation platforms. As you might imagine, the backlash has been swift and has seen individuals taking to social media to voice their frustrations along with some going as far as to cancel their Playstation Plus subscriptions.

It isn’t hard to see why people are against this new approach that Sony are seemingly ploughing towards, having a physical item that you can pop into a machine and have it play the game has long meant that games could not be taken away from us, in other words, once we have bought the game, it is ours to use as we wish be that to play, preserve, sell, trade or swap with other gamers. It has also enabled gamers to be able to shop savvy, if they can’t afford the latest release, why not purchase a game second hand that whilst a few years old is still a great game to play?

It’s also all too easy to be able to point at things Sony have done that have harmed the consumer by way of the removal of digital goods, the most recent example being the announcement of the removal of several movies from the accounts of people who had paid good money to have a digital copy of in their Playstation library. From what we have been told this is due to licencing issues, but it doesn’t negate the fact that people around the world have paid for these films and then suddenly had the digital copy yanked out of their digital accounts never to be seen again with no sign of refunds, credits or any sort of recompense in sight. In Total of 551 movies are being removed from Sony’s services. But it doesn’t stop at movies, many may remember the playable teaser P.T. which was made by Konami with Hideo Kojima at the helm, that very teaser alone is now considered lost media after Konami asked Sony to pull it from the Playstation store and whilst I appreciate that a free playable teaser for a game that was never to release being removed is a far cry from something people have paid money for, who is to say that Sony wouldn’t remove video games in the same way for lets say... licencing issues? Let’s say for instance that some of the songs played on the radio of GTA IV suddenly lose their licence, does that mean Sony could or would suddenly yank the game from being playable or downloadable?

In any case, there are obvious reasons that people are fighting against this move to an all digital platform, however I have decided to look at some of the reasons that Sony as a corporation may feel that this approach is the best going forward. Please know I am NOT advocating for this all digital future, I as much as anyone would like to see this announcement walked back, I am simply looking at the reasons Sony could be approaching things this way.

1: Boosting profits:

Sony as much as any company will be well aware of the rising costs of doing business globally and in turn the ever increasing costs of actually making video games. To give a comparison, back in the days of the PS1 around 20-30 core developers worked on the original Metal Gear Solid, when you factor in voice casts and other people who helped the game ship internationally that number rises to 120-130 people. If you look at the most recent Metal Gear game, Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater, the number of core developers is thought to be 300-400 with an entire credits of a global workforce of roughly 4000.

That is a large jump in workforce and we mustn’t forget that all these people need to paid for their contributions to the game. If you look at these numbers and look at the rate of inflation over time, game prices do not seem to have risen proportionate to the level of staff required to make new games. Back in 1998 a new big release title in the UK would cost £34.99-£39.99 which in todays money would equate to £68.00-£77.50, so in reality, we are paying roughly the same for games as we always have, however that doesn’t take into consideration the rise in resources that are needed to produce these massive AAA games. I’m not saying that Sony can’t afford to make physical games anymore, but with every case and disc that doesn’t need to be manufactured as well as international shipping, they will inevitably save money. This might not drive down the cost of games, but it might help stop them rising in cost further in the future.


2: Games are getting bigger

As the march of video game fidelity moves forward toward larger resolutions with more detailed textures, the capacity it takes to store a video game is also expanding. You only have to take a look at Call of Duty Black ops 7 to see this, if you are to install everything the game has to offer (the campaign, warzone and high resolution texture assets), the install size on the PS5 SSD comes in at somewhere around 170GB-200GB of storage space. That in itself is a larger volume of data than the largest blu-ray disc can store, to get around this size differential, companies often employ the use of compression to reduce the size of a particular file until it is unpacked onto the SSD, in some cases, the game disc doesn’t actually contain all of the data that the game has to offer, with an internet connection required to download the remaining assets. As time moves on and games get larger and larger in size, games may need to ship with several discs just to install and play the game which in turn means rising costs to put the game on a store shelf. Could we look at alternative means of game distribution outside of discs? Sure, but that would mean something akin to flash storage being used in the form of a game cartridge which in itself would mean custom cartridges being needed to be designed and manufactured which again adds to costs and lets not forget the current AI induced RAM and SSD storage shortages ongoing, the cost of buying a physical game would simply be astronomical if Sony were to go down this route, which leads me to...


3: Hardware is currently ridiculously expensive.

It’s a bit of an obvious and open secret at this point that in the next few years we are due a new console from Sony. The Playstation 6 as it will likely be named is almost certain to run up against the ever increasing cost of hardware that has plagued the world this year due to the ongoing costs of building out AI infrastructure (thanks a lot AI corporations). With this in mind, Sony are almost certain to be releasing a console that is more expensive than we might have expected 12 months ago. With this driving up of costs, Sony are likely looking at ways in which they can sell the console as cheaply as possible and in a manner in which they will be almost certain to be able to make back some of the hit they take by selling the console at a loss to begin with. Traditionally console manufacturers sell their hardware at a loss with the idea being that they make that shortfall up later down the line as you buy more games and accessories for the console, but with the added AI hardware tax currently in play, Sony may look at an all digital console as a method of making sure that every game sold helps their bottom line, for instance, if games are all digital, I can’t then walk into CEX and buy a used copy of last years WWE game for half of its original price, nor can I simply borrow the latest FIFA game from a friend to play over the weekend, no, I would need to purchase the particular game directly through Sony’s on console online store, they then make more money and can more quickly get each console sale past the breakeven point into pure profit. Sony will have the numbers they need to see how aggressive (or not) they can price this new machine.


4: Everything is an Xbox a Playstation

A digital sale on the Playstation store should offer more freedom to the user. You can’t take a physical Playstation disc with you and pop it into your PC or portable smart device and expect it to play a game, however, what if you could have that same game streamed (either locally or from a data center). This could evolve into Sony responding the Microsoft’s ill-fated Xbox everywhere idea, where you can stream your gamepass games to just about any internet connected device. Imagine a world in which you buy the latest AAA Sony exclusive for your shiny new PS6, (let’s sat The Last of Us Part III for this example), you’ve had a great evening of slaying infected and you reach the end of a chapter in the game being left on a cliffhanger, you know you can’t play on anymore that evening, forbid the boss realises you’ve been up all night shooting arrows at clickers and are sluggish at work as a result. Instead of waltzing into the office red eyed with a belly full of coffee, you goto sleep. The next morning, you get up and on your commute to work, you pull out your smartphone and game controller adapter to play the latest chapter on your commute into work over a 5G connection so that you can see exactly where the story goes and exactly where the cliffhanger leads, you do the same on your lunch hour and the same again on your commute home. Maybe you get home and the other half has decided you’re going away for the weekend to the caravan that you own for some reason, so you take your laptop and game controller with you, hook up to your 5G hotspot and get to the conclusion of the story whilst shacked up in a tiny caravan. This might not be what everyone aspires to be able to do, but it is a future that Sony may tease us with.


5: The digital only model has proven it works

It doesn’t matter what you or I think or hope for, Sony will have one eye on Apple’s app store and the other on Valve’s Steam and will be asking themselves if the grass may be greener on the all digital side of the fence. The backlash to Sony discontinuing physical games has so far been immense, there is no reason to think that the issue is likely to die down with time, but Sony will be banking on the idea that you will feel compelled enough in the games they produce to make this all digital future a reality. If we look at other forms of entertainment that have gone almost all physical, we can see the success stories, iTunes, Spotify, Netflix, eBooks. All of these things have moved to be primarily digital media, but they have done so by offering users a choice, keep buying the way you always have, or get a better deal over on the all digital side, with Netflix, users pay a monthly fee to watch as much as they wish, with iTunes, users could pay for the one song on an album that they really enjoyed listening to, Spotify came along and mixed the Netflix model with music and eBooks have become a better way for people to read, with increased font sizes for those who need them and an entire libraries worth of content on something that is less than the physical size of one small childrens novel.


By throwing physical media off of the platform altogether I suspect Sony thinks that they are simply accelerating the move to an all digital future, catching up with music and movies in some manner, but by removing the option of physical media altogether, they may actually be turning more people off than they realise, pushing them away to other platforms. The better way to an all digital gaming future would be to give real incentive and real reasons to go all digital, real tangible benefits, then let the physical media die a slow death naturally so that when it’s gone, we don’t miss it as much. Instead what Sony have announced feels very much like when Don Mattrick spoke of the during the announcement of the Xbox One when he said that for players who don’t want to check in online daily, that Microsoft have a product for them and it’s called Xbox 360. The mismanagement of the reveal and release of the Xbox One set a downward trajectory for Microsoft and the Xbox brand which it is still recovering from to this day, Sony would do well to look at the history surrounding such bold changes being forced onto consumers in the console space and try not to repeat the mistakes of their contemporaries.