You’ll probably have heard that PlayStation announced a cease on physical disc production from January 2028. Naturally, there have been plenty of memes but people are generally pissed off by the news. There are petitions, a growth in jailbreaking PS5’s, silence from industry trade body, and signposting the wider ramifications of the decision. I wasn’t going to write about this too much beyond joining in with the memes but hearing stories about what physical media has meant to people in their childhoods made me think of my own experiences.
The most excitement I’ve ever felt after receiving media was from physical media. Holding video games in my hand or records or CDs or even VHS tapes and just staring at the covers for ages felt like a human rite of passage. The tactility of it all is so overlooked now and maybe even back then. And it’s not just physical media that has felt a shift from a tangible experience to an on/off switch. Game manuals slowly became one-sheet inserts and then PDFs. Last week, I wrote my mum’s birthday card and I usually write some little in-jokes on the left side. Maybe it was just how my fingers were feeling that day but it felt like such a strain to write the words. It made me realise that I should write more and how that shift from pen to touchscreen has done a number on me. Luckily pen and paper will never cease.
I also think about the artists who draw by hand, even if it might brings them pain. There’s a flow from the brain to the hand to the canvas—analog or digital—and there’s a similar flow when holding physical media. Is it sentimental? Yes. Do corporations care? Only if they can translate it to meaningful profit.
And yes, people have been quick to point to larger digital sales and blame the consumer on the decision but that ignores and arguably absolves the companies of their decision-making and tactics. If prices and cost of living keep going up with wages not meeting them at the same rate, and digital storefront discounts a regular thing (hi, Steam sale!), what are people going to do? Nintendo have been notorious for keeping Switch game prices at or as close to RRP for years. Remember when you could get a new DS/3DS game at a discount?
But we aren’t corporations and we don’t have to see everything through that lens. It’s actually abnormal to talk like an economist or a financial officer when you’re the consumer. We are seeing the word “trillion” more than ever before in spite of continuous layoffs and operational shutdowns and AI proliferation.
It doesn’t make sense unless you realise that it’s about control, power, and squeezing everyone and everything for their last pennies and cents. It’s maximise profits time, baby! Wanting a physical disc instead of a lease to a digital file that you pay for multiple times and have no ownership of is a drop in the ocean here. People are willing to pay for that sentimentality. Or, you know, a game that they can use over and over without fear of it being taken from their collection, never to be accessed again. Just look at how PlayStation have removed access to purchased films from owners’ PS5 libraries. And somehow piracy was an “unintended consequence”? We’re all starting our Joker arcs over this.
Jiikae on Bluesky made a good point about collections and raised concerns over how collecting “gets lumped in as a part of gaming”. You’ll see YouTubers with wall-to-wall collections as they talk about obscure games or reel off yet another top 10 list and you do start to wonder how many of those games they actually played—and when. It’s worth probing into that while we participate in this physical media requiem. We shouldn’t be grabbing for the sake of it, just like we shouldn’t be buying every last game in the perennial Steam sales “to help indie devs” only to not play the games. If we want physical media to stay, we have to use them. Even if it means dumping ROMs. I hate the LARPer jibes that get thrown at people at the moment but we inch ever closer to that truth if we don’t interact with our purchases in a meaningful way and that includes me, the owner of too many shrink-wrapped vinyl records
So is physical media too much to ask for? No. I know I already answered that but it bears repeating. Disc manufacture isn’t hemorrhaging money. Digital may be the more popular option but it’s better to have the choice. If we only have a single means of access and it’s not even full access, we’re just tenants and the companies are landlords. Very very very rich landlords. And, again, we’re only asking for a disc and a means to play it—if we want to. I think that’s more than reasonable.