PlayStation Reportedly Didn't Tell Publishers or Partners It Was Killing Physical Discs - News
by William D'Angelo , posted 5 days ago / 2,885 Views
PlayStation last week announced it is ending physical game disc production for all new games released on PlayStation consoles starting January 2028. Starting in January 2028, all new games release on PlayStation consoles on the PlayStation Store and at retailers will be in digital formats only.
Sources familiar with PlayStation's plans speaking with High Chaos Run have claimed Sony did not warn publishers, business partners, or even branches in other markets ahead of the announcement.
An executive at a major AAA publisher told the site, "Despite our seemingly close working relationship with PlayStation we weren't informed that this was happening. It's only hitting us now that we may be out of jobs sooner rather than later."
PlayStation's India operations were not told about this change and at the time of the announcement were negotiating deals with local distributors and retailers to invest in and set up exclusive PlayStation brick-and-mortar stores with a goal of having around 100 of these in India by 2028.
"Why would we even work with PlayStation let alone invest a couple of crores on a store when they won’t be selling discs," said an investor. "What's worse is: PlayStation India didn't even tell us this was happening before it went public, but kept asking us to put money in all the same. They didn't know either."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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Man how the mighty has fallen to become such a low and scummy company
Sadly this is just a continuation of the trend that's been going on for a long time now. As far as I see, Sony has been increasingly anti-consumer since late PS3 days, when they tried the online pass stuff. Then it was paid online starting with PS4, and the PS5 era has been just terrible and becoming worse.
It's not going to get better. At the moment it's looking an awful lot like downloadable games only, so there goes a significant portion of ownership too. I'm not going to even guess how the prices are going to go, because the situation is pretty unpredictable right now... but I wouldn't expect there to be competition that could lower prices all that low, so might be a pretty bad generation price-wise too. At least streaming isn't coming big time yet - I guess... and hope.
Thanks for the reply. I see it mostly the same way, only I wonder how much consideration is going on at MS right now. You gotta believe at least some of them are THINKING about doing a 2013 Sony. They've all but buried their brand. If done just right, this could be their last shot at salvaging it.
I think they're looking to make Xbox more profitable, which probably goes pretty well with a digital-only future. Personally I wouldn't get my hopes up, but you never know. If their plans for the next Xbox aren't in conflict with physical distribution as well, I guess supporting it is something they could still be open to.
They are all the same (except Nintendo) they all want the same things and will get it the same way. Some just take longer.
Insert "Surprise Mfker" meme
Most publishers probably dont' mind, they maybe will say they don't like on social media but at the office they probably were very happy. Second hand gamers are like poison for them.
I disagree, a lot of smaller publishers like japanese one rely heavily on there hardcore fans who loves to collect those games.
That's the thing. Smaller publishers don't make up most publishers. Which unfortunately Sony is listening to the latter rather than the former.
Even if they reverse course for a little longer, trust has to be gone for most gamers at this point with both Sony and Microsoft.
they aren't going to reverse course and certainly not because social media is mad. this is where things were always heading and it does make the most sense financially for a variety of reasons. who knows why they decided to announce so far in aadvance and at the same time announcing they were closing 2 digital stores but that can't have been an accident. feels like they are in full rip all the band-aids off at once mode ffor reasons known only to themselves.
Yeah, easily foreseen by anyone paying any attention for the last 10+ years. 10 years ago there was speculation that there might not be disc versions of PS5 and XBox X. It has only been a question of "when", not "if". The disc player in my PS5 has almost only been used for watching blurays.
It told them the same time as the rest of us. Have to protect leaks and people trading on insider information.
Reminds me of Sega at 95's E3...
Well they gave them and everyone else 18 months to prepare, while that decission is very bad the time is a lot for publishers of 2027 games to prepare and manufacture their disc games.
Honestly I have to wonder if this should be anti-competition legal issue.
Basically shutting down competition in game distribution, despite their console supporting discs.
(which ironically, I recall somebody here recently touting as the thing that protects them from competition law)
Give us names that green-lit this decision so the world knows who exactly is accountable for their downfall.
What tha...
It sounds like PlayStation India was not aware.
It's over 18 months before they do it. Aren't discs only printed like a few months before? A lot can change in the industry by then. The last month has been example of that.
surprise!
Not surprising.
