Big gaming companies can't stop stepping on rakes at the moment. Xbox has recently been riding a wave of negative press as it plagues itself with price hikes, studio closings and layoffs, and yesterday PlayStation followed suit.
It announced that starting in 2028, it would no longer support physical media, marking the end of an era for video games. The move was highly unpopular on social media, with thousands commenting on the post and many more sharing screenshots of those canceling their PS Plus subscriptions.
It turns out that this move will come as very little surprise to video game visionary Hideo Kojima, who predicted back in 2021 that this very thing would happen.
“As consumer preferences and the wider entertainment industry continue to shift away from physical discs to digital, the production of physical game discs for all new games released on PlayStation consoles will cease as of January 2028,” said the statement released by Sony yesterday. The move was incredibly controversial, garnering over 53,000 comments in less than 24 hours.
But while controversial, it's not particularly shocking to Hideo Kojima, creator of Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding, who predicted this would happen almost five years ago today.
“Eventually, even digital data will no longer be owned by individuals on their own initiative. Whenever there is a major change or accident in the world, in a country, in a government, in an idea, in a trend, access to it can be suddenly cut off,” he said in a social media post on August 5, 2021. “We will not be able to freely access a book that I wouldn't have had, and I wouldn't have had access to it. That's what I'm afraid of. This is not greed.
We will not be able to freely access the movies, books and music we have loved – Hideo Kojima.
Kojima has always been a forward-thinker. Many of his games touch on socio-economic issues long before they arise, like Death Stranding's harbinger of the covid-19 pandemic. His musings outside of his game worlds have also often been poignant. In 2010, he suggested: “In the near future, we will have games that are not dependent on any platform. Players will be able to take their experiences with them in their living rooms, on the go, when they travel. Wherever they are and whenever they want to play.”
A move like the one Sony is making now will always be unpopular, but its timing couldn't have been worse. Just four days before, it announced that it would delete over 500 movies from PlayStation accounts, regardless of whether they had been purchased. It sets a precedent that the same thing can happen for video games.
- Stamp
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Sony
- Original release date
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November 12, 2020
- Original MSRP (USD)
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$499, €499, £449, £49,980 (Base) // $399, €399, £359, £39,980 (Digital),
- Operating system
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Orbis Olympics
- Processor
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Custom 8-core AMD Zen 2
- Resolution
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720p – 8K
