Ever since Sony decided to kill off PlayStation discs starting in 2028, the backlash has been pronounced to say the least. And, now, it looks like former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden is also questioning Sony’s decision.
Last week, Layden was interviewed in an episode of The Expansion Pass podcast, where he was asked about his take on Sony’s decision to kill discs. And while he makes it clear that he wasn’t in the room for the decision, he prefaces his take by saying “gamers are… yeah, we like the digital download. People said, ‘Oh, downloading a game is easier than going to the store!’ No, no, downloading a game is easier than going across my living room to put a disc in the machine. I don’t even have to do that.”
But while digital downloads have always been a win for convenience, Layden said he still believes the decision to kill off discs completely is misguided.
“But I do think, particularly in the gaming realm, maybe 80% of the people download and 20% don’t, whatever that breakdown might be, but that’s a super important 20%,” he said. “I mean, that is largely the most faithful of the faithful, that is, many times, the people who buy two copies of every game, one never gets out of the shrink wrap, and you play the other one.”
There are definitely people out there who collect unopened games to put on their shelves, but the bigger issue about this move is the question of ownership. Now, over on PC, we’ve had to live with this reality for years, thanks to the proliferation of Steam and digital games, but even then, there’s at least GOG, which will let you download a game without DRM a lot of the time that you can just archive on your own disc.
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But PlayStation will likely never get that option, so the question about ownership is huge, and something that Layden catches onto here.
“It changes the conversation from ‘do you own a game, or do you have access to a digital asset?” Layden concluded. “If you can’t sell a thing, it means you don’t own a thing. If you don’t own it, then what are you buying? If you’re buying access that doesn’t quite sound as sexy, to be honest.”
Layden does hit the core of the issue here, and while Sony would likely argue that you were still buying access to a digital access when you were buying the disc, the loss of the tangible item really makes that illusion disappear. From there, it’s easy to see why people look at Sony pulling access to movies and imagine that the same is going to happen for their games.
For his part, Layden makes that same connection, noting that, “As people tend to do, in their mind, they’ll game out the worst case scenario. And that’s a whole lot of brand hit and reputation bite.” It certainly was a huge hit to Sony’s reputation. Only time will tell, now, whether or not the money Sony saves by not producing discs will be worth the ill will it generated when it killed discs.
Sony does seem intent on making unpopular moves. Earlier this month it filed a couple of patents that would use AI to create vibe-coded patches to fix your PS5, and another that would put an NFC card reader in your controller.
Jackie Thomas is the Senior Tech Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. She’s been covering gaming hardware for more than a decade for IGN, TechRadar, Gizmodo, PC Gamer and more. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
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