Despite Sony drawing plenty of criticism for its decision to end PlayStation disc production starting from January 2028, the company seems to have no plans to back down. In a recent earnings call, the company’s CFO Lin Tao said during a Q&A segment that Sony strongly believes that “digitalization is progressing” beyond just PlayStation.
However, Tao also acknowledged some of the complaints from the PlayStation community, and noted that the company has to pay attention to how it can engage with gamers in the “future digital ecosystem”.
“There are various reasons we made this decision, the biggest being that the digitalization of content overall has been progressing, that’s the big factor,” she said, as caught by social media user Ethan Gach. “It’s not just PlayStation, but for all kinds of content, digitalization is progressing. And so, when we think about the future – and we put in a lot of thought and time, and we cautiously considered this – and we came to this conclusion, and we’re going to cautiously move this forward. And to this decision, we have received various opinions and people have strong views, and we understand that the community has put forth those views to us.”
“Games are beloved by many people. It’s a form of entertainment that’s loved by people, and it’s connected to people’s fond memories in many cases. And so, we understand those emotions. We want to consider that. And in the future digital ecosystem, how do we engage the gamers is something that we would continue to explore.”
Sony’s announcement from earlier this month has sparked quite a bit of discussion regarding the nature of physical releases and why Sony would make such a decision. Recently, former Valve writer Chet Faliszek spoke about how there isn’t really a grand conspiracy, and that consumer behavior has pointed companies in this direction.
“You, the consumer, have made a choice, and your choice is for digital,” he said. “I keep seeing this, like, ‘Oh, they should do memory cards. They should do…’ Right now, today, the games we are talking about are available at retail. Today. The used games are available at retail today. And you aren’t going into retail and buying them. So much so, GameStop only has 18 percent of their entire revenue being games. New and used. 18 percent. Of a company called GameStop, that used to do nothing but sell games.”
In the meantime, quite a few industry analysts have also spoken about the decision, with many pointing out that it will likely harm players in the long run. Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities, for instance, noted that, while Sony might save money when it comes to disc production, “there can be no question that the consumer pays the tax in terms of less optionality.” Similarly, F-Squared’s Michael Fuffter called Sony’s announcement “an extremely anti-consumer decision” that has “no legitimate justification and communicates a disdain for players in their ecosystem.”
For its part, Sony has said that its decision is an attempt to orient PlayStation with consumer behaviour that seems to prefer digital over physical.
