Sony has stepped in it now, announcing plans to stop selling new PlayStation disc copies of games when 2028 begins, ending an era of physical gaming media that has existed since the medium’s inception.

The pushback is not just swift and vehement among fans. It appears this situation might be the most outraged gamers have been at PlayStation in 20 years, if not ever. The tweet announcing the move has an absurd 57,000 replies and 55,000 retweets, 99% furious. Everyone replying along the lines of “actually, this is fine” is getting ratioed to oblivion. The internet is swarming with articles and videos decrying the decision.

  • I’m not sure I’ve seen anything like this since 2006. Do you remember? That was when Sony, high off its PS2 success, believed it could charge $600 for a PS3 at launch. Adjusted for inflation, that would be over $1,000. On top of that, Sony’s Ken Kutaragi said in an interview that the “goal” for the PS3 was “for consumers to think to themselves 'I will work more hours to buy one'. We want people to feel that they want it, irrespective of anything else.” You might guess how that went over.
  • That was the same era when an Xbox 360 cost $300 at launch, with a $400 “premium” version. The blowback, and its competition, was so intense that in July 2027, Sony reduced the price to $500. In October of that year, it introduced a lower storage model for $400, finally getting close to Xbox level. The PS3 Slim launched at $300 in 2009, though at that point, it was widely accepted that the initial launch damaged the entire generation.
  • There have been other scandals and fan-angering moments over the years. In 2011, there was the infamous security breach that brought PSN down for 23 days, though that was just… bad, rather than Sony making some specific decision.
  • For a while, Sony was the last holdout on crossplay across platforms, a stance that was amplified as Fortnite’s popularity rose, and it eventually had to relent.
  • More recently in 2024, Helldivers 2 inspired Sony to tell all PC players they had to link their Steam accounts to a PSN account , a problem given that PSN doesn’t even exist in 170 countries and the game had to stop being sold there. Helldivers 2 was bombed with hundreds of thousands of negative reviews, and Sony reversed the policy within days.

You might notice a trend here in that the “bad decisions” were almost all reversed after the fans revolted. But this disc issue? That seems like a larger-scale strategy that goes beyond a decision that can be switched off on a whim. It’s not a price reduction or account link requirement. This will have to do with the design and release of the entire next generation of consoles, and is a potentially industry-changing move unlike anything else on this list. That’s why I would argue it’s probably more significant than the PS3 price drama, as it speaks to a larger issue that has been brewing for two full generations now, after Microsoft tried to herd players in this direction. Though reports indicate that Microsoft is about to get rid of new discs for its upcoming Xbox Helix too.

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I don’t know if this can be walked back like the others. It has unified the gaming community almost in totality, but it feels like an unstoppable force, immovable object situation. Ultimately, however, it seems like consumers may lose this one.

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