GoKawiilIt's not about physical vs digital games, it's about ownership
05 Jul, 2026
A few days ago, PlayStation announced that they'll stop producing disks for new games starting from January 2028, confirming what we already felt was going to happen: consoles are going fully digital, and the disk drive will cease to exist.
I've seen a lot of great discussions on the internet about this, but I can't help but feel like people are mad about the wrong thing, or completely misunderstand why this is an issue. They have the right idea, getting rid of disks is bad for everyone, but it's not about the disk and putting your games on the shelf... it's about Sony's attempt to completely kill ownership. People keep comparing this to PC getting rid of disk drives, but these two scenarios are not comparable at all. I'll get to that later.
Ownership as in the ability to trade
The biggest thing about owning something is the ability to trade it with whoever you'd like. When I was younger, I used to constantly trade PS3 and PS4 games with my friends. Whether it was to loan them a copy of the Jak & Daxter trilogy or to sell a game to someone I know, passing around console games is practically tradition at this point.
But companies have always been vocal about how much they despise used games. How could someone possibly buy God of War for $20 from their friend instead of buying it for $40 from the store?! Every dime spent on used games is a dime lost for the company, right?!
The decision to kill disks isn't some kneejerk reaction to anything, it's something console owners have been slowly building up to for the last ~15 years. The entire reason Xbox One flopped so hard and became a laughing stock was, among other things, because they tried to kill the ability to re-sell the disk you paid for, and forcing your console to always be online to verify your games. Apparently, they were just too early to try this.
This also isn't specific to video games. It's something literally every industry has been obsessed with to maximize profits. If anything, video games were late compared to something like the music industry, where not owning your music has been the status quo for a while now!
And now that we're catching up, the concept of "giving a game to someone else" will cease to exist. The next generation of young games will just accept buying a digital game off the store as just how games work now. You'll be there explaining to the young'uns how it used to be. How giving your favorite game to your best friend in school was the normal thing that they will never get to experience.
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