Sony has announced that, come 2028, games will no longer have physical disc releases. Everything will be digital on the PlayStation store or those little download codes in boxes at retailers. This will, in essence, kill the resale market for any new video-games games and really makes it look like the PlayStation 6 could be coming in 2028, and will be digital-only. We've had the option of digital-only consoles for some time (Xbox Series S springs to mind), but that being the sole option is worrisome for reasons I have outlined in various posts. You don't truly own that digital content, after all, and it could get harder to access at any point in the future. As if to drive this point home, Sony also announced it was shutting down the virtual stores for the PS3 and Vita--so download any games or updates while you still can! The internet is, to put it simply, enraged/pissed/big mad.
In this day and age, even if a ton of sales are digital, having physical options makes it easier to rent a game, check it out from the library, borrow it from a friend, or otherwise do things that save consumers money. Then again, I suppose that costs companies some extra bucks they want to squeeze from people. Between AI chatbots that almost seem eerily self-aware and spew misinformation, the rise of science denial or political faelshoods (an alarming number of people insist the Earth is flat, vaccines cause autism, and any election their candidate didn't win was rigged), everything becoming a subscription service, and basic human rights being under attack (marriage equality, the right to an abortion, trans rights, and the list goes on), this future we're rapidly speeding towards seems more like a brick wall of destruction than an open road of progress. You know, Marion Stokes spent decades operating many VCRS so that she could tape hundreds of hours of television. She was a librarian, T.V. producer, and activist who was concerned that if we didn't have a record of what really happened in history, lies and falsehoods would be easy to spread with zero proof to counter them. Now, everything may end up digital and easy to alter without anyone noticing. My point is, she had a pretty solid argument.
