“This is how you play your games on PS4.” Remember that infamous tagline? The marketing blurb that (arguably) single-handedly brought down the Xbox One? Well, apparently not anymore! Sony recently announced on a blog post that physical disc media for PlayStation games is coming to an end in January 2028. Let’s pour one out for all those 45-minute loading screens we will never see again.
It was probably going to happen eventually, and according to Sony’s own data, nearly 80% of all game sales were digital last year. Downloads are more convenient, take up no room on the shelf, are instantly available on launch day without camping outside a store, are automatically patched, and are never out of stock. The benefits are obvious, right?
We’ve all seen the horrors of games suddenly removed from a digital storefront—games you purchased. Digital and online-only titles that break as soon as the servers go dark, which always happens eventually. How frequently? Well, for the PC enthusiasts, not that often.
While digital distribution can be traced back to the Atari 2600, the PC ecosystem was the first to truly embrace the digital revolution. It was the best-case scenario: PC’s can be stuffed full of hard drives, and those drives can easily be backed up and migrated to a newer machine. The file system can be fully accessed and manipulated by the user both physically and digitally. Data can be preserved without any intervention from the publisher. Users could build and access their own bespoke download servers.
On the process side, the complexity of PC software installation with different drivers, settings, and hardware compatibility is made much simpler with automatic patches. Storefronts and repositories created concentrated points of access where developers could easily push updates, and users could easily find them, rather than search out individual title websites. Windows, Linux, and Mac have been offering their own bespoke versions of this system for years for system and general app updates.
The PC ecosystem is also many machines, operating systems (OSs), and configurations. To purchase something on PC culturally implies infinite future compatibility, even if the software is abandoned. Someone somewhere will whip up an unofficial patch, virtual environment, or Docker container to keep your software alive through the decades. Users have the power to keep software going. The risk of future storefront or development shutdown is minimal when anyone can patch the software and push it to the internet. For consoles? That is a different story.
Video game consoles have a history of walled gardens, dating back to the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). In the early days culminating with final Atari machines, it was open season (no licenses required); interoperability with controllers was even common. While game cartridges were set to the specific boxes, anyone could make games for any system, and ports were everywhere. Developers flooded the zone with games, but with only word of mouth or a Blockbuster rental to guide quality purchasing, it was impossible for users to sift through bad software. Customers lost money on too many bad deals, which led to the Video Game Crash of ’83.
History is important here because Nintendo came along with the idea to resurrect the public’s trust in video games again. They would actively curate their game environment (displayed by a Seal of Quality) to give customers confidence that the games they bought on Nintendo were worth their money. They were the gatekeepers, and unauthorized software was locked out and shunned. This was the new standard: manufacturers would curate their own ecosystem and gatekeep those standards.
At the time, that was the best way forward. Customer confidence in quality games was back, but the locked-down approach started to crack as the internet phased into popularity. Game reviews that were missing back in the 80s were now abundant. The walled gardens made less sense, and while game exclusivity was still acceptable as a pinnacle experience for your specific machine, the frustration of having to rebuild your library with each new box and having to buy multiple consoles to experience all the great games was beginning to reach a critical mass with customers.
With the introduction of the first Xbox, Microsoft set the stage for a standardized future. Up until then, video game hardware was largely specialized. Computer graphics were computationally expensive, and consoles were developed with a high degree of specialized hardware engineering to eke out as much performance as possible. The tradeoff was development fragmentation, as software had to be written differently from console to console, which fed into game exclusivity. The Xbox effectively took PC parts and the Windows graphics Application Programming Interface (API) and surrounded them with a console shell. The PS2 and GameCube were still specialized machines; effective, but developers that designed for PC could more easily ship for Xbox, too.
While Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft stayed with the same hardware strategy in the next generation, developers were releasing on multiple platforms more than ever. Fewer studios were willing to put the extra time and effort into maximizing quality for the unique hardware of the PS3 and format constraints of the GameCube when they could hit the Xbox and PC simultaneously much more easily. Hardware consolidation came to a head in 2013, when the Xbox One and PS4 (and Switch with a mobile flavor) were sporting, effectively, standardized hardware. Multi-platform development was a snap, and the hardware differences between the consoles were minimal. They all output the same sound and graphics. Consumer reasons for sticking to one ecosystem, and those ecosystems themselves, made less sense than ever. Consoles were effectively standardized PCs.
Console benefits are still present, though: the ease of use is still unmatched, and development is still easier with a generic benchmark of hardware. Mass manufacturing a specific hardware configuration allows for lower machine prices, too. For game ownership, though, an ecosystem lock-in is difficult to justify.
Up until the eighth console generation (Xbox One, PS4, Wii U), physical media was the most practical way to run game software on any machine. Downloadable content (DLC), patches, and Indie games were popular as downloads, but full title downloads had not yet caught up to PC standardization. Since the consoles were specialized hardware, it made sense that physical media only worked on the machine it was designed for. While some early systems, like Atari, had backwards compatibility with older titles, the library history of the entire industry at that time was still relatively fresh, so it wasn’t a must-have. As console hardware edged closer to the same PC-like standard, of whose users enjoyed their libraries going back decades, it was time for console gamers to demand the same. The Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii all emphasized backwards-compatibility. Future library retention was finally here, and finally a standard for the most part, but another problem was creeping into standardization: digital licenses.
No one expects a publisher to maintain servers or storefronts forever, but at least physical media can’t be taken away from the purchaser. It might only work on a specific console, but the hardware is always available second-hand long after it is discontinued. Archivists will back up that data for preservation. On the PC, this is the standard, regardless of the format the data rode in on. For consoles, it is far less clear. At least with physical media, future compatibility always remains possible.
Digital-only console games will only work in the ecosystem they are purchased for. Since the hardware is completely controlled by that manufacturer, it is up to them to build future machines that honor legacy compatibility. The community has no ability to adapt the software to different configurations if need be. The manufacturer has no obligation to keep old software alive if it deems it too costly to support with future hardware. If licensing agreements are unfavorable, or perhaps if a ‘remaster’ could gather another round of fresh sales should those old titles become unsupported. The longest-running console storefronts date back only a few generations, and titles and storefronts themselves are constantly abandoned, yet games on DOS are fully obtainable and playable on a PC today in downloadable form that wasn’t possible at launch.
Locking into the digital storefronts of console manufacturers right now is fraught with risk. The history of support is not good enough compared to PC, and that is the benchmark. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo need to do more to earn trust if physical media is to be discontinued. They need to work on curating as many legacy titles onto their storefronts as possible. They need to allow digital titles to be downloaded and archived to a user’s own physical media. They need to have clear discontinuation dates and disclaimers of when your software will no longer function, because it can’t be community patched into the future. They need to ensure sharing your games with friends and family is easy and free like it always has been.
Physical media is a less-convenient legacy technology, which doesn’t make sense to keep around forever, but it risks being replaced with a future that is more renting than owning. Something no customer wants. Hopefully the console manufacturers will lean into the all-digital age with the same cultural implications as PC titles have enjoyed for generations, but they have a lot of work to do. I wouldn’t consider any game purchased on a console storefront as anything other than an extended rental for now. Both Sony and Microsoft seem to be aware of the concern, but the future is still largely unknown.
Here’s hoping that changes.
Leave a Reply