{"id":2034226,"date":"2026-07-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2034226"},"modified":"2026-07-09T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T21:00:00","slug":"dont-kill-the-disc-200000-gamers-tell-sony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2034226","title":{"rendered":"‘Don\u2019t kill the disc,’ 200,000+ gamers tell Sony"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It\u2019s been one week since Sony announced that they\u2019d be\u00a0ceasing physical disc production of new games releasing for its PlayStation consoles<\/a> from January 2028. And it wouldn\u2019t be the least bit hyperbolic to say that the news has gone down as well as if the company announced that its bosses would be sneaking into your house and turning your fridge-freezer off in the night.<\/p>\n

Gamers have raised concerns about what the end of disc copies means for game ownership. Without a physical copy of the game, we\u2019re beholden to digital libraries whose platform holders are free to revoke access whenever they choose.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It also has obvious repercussions on high street retail businesses, and on the used game market, which would essentially cease to exist.<\/p>\n

Back in 2013 PlayStation scored a huge marketing win against the Xbox One when it released\u00a0this tongue-in-cheek \u2018tutorial\u2019 video<\/a> on how to share your used games on PlayStation 4, in which former SIE boss simply hands over a boxed copy to former VP of third-party relations Adam Boyes. 13 years later, that video takes on a new significance. It isn\u2019t Xbox Yoshida and Boyes are mocking anymore, but the modern PlayStation business.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A petition titled \u2018Don’t Kill the Disc: Tell Sony to Keep Physical PlayStation Games<\/a>\u2019 arrived on change.org shortly after, and it\u2019s already ticked past 200,000 signatures.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the market leader ends the disc, the rest of the industry follows,\u201d reads the petition.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cA disc is a real game you own. You can lend it, trade it, resell it, gift it, collect it, or pass it down to your kids. A box with only a download code is not the same thing. It is a digital license in plastic packaging.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou do not own it. You are renting access that can be revoked, and people have already had purchased movies deleted from their libraries and games pulled from sale weeks after launch.\u201d<\/p>\n

The petition\u2019s creator Jade Pearce also highlights the potential impact on jobs within retailers, distributors, manufacturers, warehousing and logistics, and warns many small businesses\u00a0 would be negatively affected.<\/p>\n

For Sony\u2019s part, the PlayStation manufacturer says it\u2019s simply responding to \u201cshifting trends in consumer preference\u201d. Over the last decade\u00a0digital sales have exceeded physical, and some estimates place the ratio at\u00a0about 80:20 in digital sales\u2019 favour, though some gamers have pointed out that the way Sony reports sales skews towards digital anyway, since all DLC and microtransaction revenue count as digital sales, not just copies of games.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Recently a\u00a0Nintendo financial report<\/a> revealed that for the first time in the company\u2019s history, digital sales had overtaken physical.<\/p>\n

Sony does have a basis for claiming that consumers have a preference for digital games, then, but has perhaps overlooked the importance of the two existing in parallel.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unlikely that a petition will stop a multinational\u2019s business plans in their tracks, but the volume of signatures does show what a big issue this is to gamers, and it puts pressure on Sony and its business contemporaries to reflect consumer demand.<\/p>\n

Just a few days before Sony\u2019s bombshell, Rockstar announced that the boxed copies of\u00a0Grand Theft Auto VI\u00a0<\/em>would\u00a0not contain a disc<\/a>, but simply a download code for a digital copy of the game. That didn\u2019t go down well either.<\/p>\n

Those two announcements happening in quick succession have brought about a line in the sand moment, with gamers hoping that if they can dissuade arguably the two biggest players in the market from ditching discs, the rest of the industry will follow suit and true ownership of their games will remain intact.<\/p>\n

Get the popcorn out \u2013 this one\u2019s going to roll on for a while.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been one week since Sony announced that they\u2019d be\u00a0ceasing physical disc production of new games releasing for its PlayStation consoles from January 2028. And it wouldn\u2019t be the least bit hyperbolic to say that the news has gone down as well as if the company announced that its bosses would be sneaking into your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,237],"class_list":["post-2034226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-topgear-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2034226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2034226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2034226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2034226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}