In light of all of the controversy and backlash surrounding Sony’s recent announcement that it is ending the production of PlayStation discs in January 2028, Sega has announced that it has no current plans to follow suit. In an interview with Famitsu, the president and COO of the company, Shuji Utsumi, was asked about the announcement, to which he responded by discussing Sega’s own history as a console maker.
“We were originally a platform provider, and of course, we still value our physical culture. Rather than completely abandoning that, we are currently challenging ourselves to shift towards being able to think about and act on the important aspects of digital in parallel.”
It is worth noting that Utsumi didn’t quite make a strong stance that would run counter to PlayStation’s plans for the future of games media. Rather, his note that Sega wants to continue thinking about physical and digital releases in parallel might indicate that, while it might have to give up on game discs for PlayStation once Sony ceases production, the company wants to continue making its physical releases an attractive way to buy games.
What physical copies after January 2028 would even mean remains to be seen, and we’re likely to still get physical releases that include a redeemable code for the game, in the vein of the upcoming release of Grand Theft Auto 6 this year.
Sony’s announcement about the end of physical media for PlayStation came earlier this month, with the company saying that it wants to align itself with current trends in how consumers prefer to buy their games. Analysts, however, believe that the company might have a future-facing motive with this decision. Niko Partners’ Daniel Ahmad, for instance, compared the move with Apple’s decision to stop including disc drives in its computers back in 2008.
While he acknowledged that there were complaints at the time, Apple’s move has seemingly been the right one, since even by the mid-2010s, criticism of the decision had died down. Today, it’s difficult to find a PC cases that even have room for a disc drive. Similarly, Sony might be laying the foundations for how it ships media on the PS6 or even the PS7.
“If not for PS6, then PS7. Full game digital sales on PlayStation have gone from less than 10% before the release of the PS4 to around 80% today. On Xbox it’s already over 90%, and if anything, I’m surprised they weren’t the ones to do it first. Yes, these numbers include digital-only games, reflecting the current market environment, but they don’t include DLC, microtransactions, or subscriptions / free games.”
Kantan Games CEO, Dr. Serkan Toto, on the other hand, believes that all of the backlash about Sony’s decision ultimately won’t amount to much, and that the company is simply waiting for the “storm” to pass it by.
“I sympathize with physical media fans, but Sony will not reverse this decision,” said Dr. Toto. “They, of course, knew what the online reaction would look like, and they now wait for this storm to pass.”
