As fans protest PlayStationOn the decision to end production of physical discs in 2028, a prominent gaming industry analyst says that it will not matter to Sony and that the company's reasons for the decision outweigh any negative fan sentiment. PlayStation recently became the first major console manufacturer to embrace a digital-only future, and very few people seem to be happy about it.
Sony's controversial decision to end production of physical PlayStation discs in 2028 has quickly become one of the most controversial decisions the company has ever made. Among the fans online who expressed their displeasure at the announcement are prominent game developers such as Baldur's Gate 3 and Animal well even joined in, with many stating that the physical release was the reason they wanted to make the games in the first place. Most recently, PlayStation fans began logging out of PS Plus in droves to send Sony a message that they want physical games back.
PlayStation fans won't stop Sony from discontinuing disc production, analyst says
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Image via Sony -
Image via PlayStation -
Image via PlayStation
Dr. Serkan Toto, CEO of gaming industry consultancy Kantan Games, recently spoke with IGN about the ongoing PS Plus protests. In his opinion, none of this will matter to Sony because the company will weather this PR storm and then it will be business as usual. The CEO says that even if 500,000 of the company's 120 million subscribers canceled their membership, that would be just 1% of the subscriber base and hardly move Sony to act. Additionally, while physical disc sales have been expected in the gaming industry since its inception, digital sales now far outweigh physical sales, and profit margins are too good for Sony to abandon its digital-only stance. This states: “Economically, digital sales make too much sense, especially for platform holders.”
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While the loss of physical PlayStation games in 2028 is a huge disappointment, the decision makes financial sense, and it's not just Dr. Serkan Toto, who says that. Recently, Lords of the Fallen 2 CEO Marek Tyminski announced this on social networks GTA 6 going digital-only is unfair to the smaller studios who still want to support physical discs because the profit margins are so small that they probably can't cover the costs of launching on physical media like a major studio. Both Tyminski and Toto threw out numbers about what studios and publishers can expect to get from digital vs. physical release, with Tyminski saying studios are likely to see around $26 per unit, and Toto said Sony will get a 15% royalty cut from each third-party game it sells.
Compared to digital, Tyminski said the studio would get about $49 per top-margin digital sale, and Toto said Sony would get about a 30% cut from third-party digital licenses of the game. First-party PlayStation exclusives are a different story though, as only a Sony-made digital game would make 100% profit for the company. Needless to say, if PlayStation really wanted to expand those profit margins, going digital-only is the way to go, which would also soften the blow when games like Saros start preparing reports for low sales.
Final remarks by Dr. They even put it this way: “Their current profit margin has been too weak for years, so they feel they have to act.” As technology prices rise and the cost of game production continues to rise, it seems that this may have been inevitable. GTA 6 had just become the first major AAA game to be released digitally only for $80, and it could have encouraged many publishers to do the same in due course until Sony was the first to plant the digital-only flag. While games like Alan Wake 2 It seems he tried and failed to be strictly digital after fan outcry GTA 6 and Sony may be pioneering the future of digital consoles, for better or for worse.
