On July 2, Sony Interactive Entertainment announced it would stop manufacturing physical discs for its PlayStation consoles starting in 2028. Ever since, the company has been swimming upstream against a torrent of critics.
Since the announcement, nearly every post to the company’s official X account has been met with hordes of replies stating some version of “no disc, no buy” or “greed has no limits” (a riff on PlayStation’s “play has no limits” slogan). During an Aug. 18 preview for the upcoming action role-playing game Phantom Blade Zero, critics again swarmed the YouTube chat with CD emojis and pleas of “GIVE US OUR DISCS.”
As Sony sends out reminders that digital purchases are licenses to access games, rather than transactions that grant ownership, some critics have dug back into Sony’s past, dredging up a 2013 ad and satirical response to rival Microsoft’s convoluted game-sharing system. The solution within the Sony ecosystem, two executives demonstrated, was simply handing a disc over to a friend (the top comment posted to YouTube last month: “That one didn’t age quite so well”).
