In recent events, Playstation has announced that they will completely stop production of physical copies of their games starting January 2028. Now, this might come as a shock to some of you but it’s been coming for some time. Mainly due to the huge increase in digital sales in the last few years. I’ll be the first to admit it, I’ve stopped buying game CD’s for a while now. I believe that the last one that I bought was back in 2022 and it was God of War Ragnarok.
The major reason for it is because predominantly I’m a PC gamer. There’s no specific timeline when we went through this but my best guess would be somewhere between 2013 and 2016. That’s a period when most gaming companies started shifting from physical copies to digital. Some of them started selling empty boxes with codes for them, which if you ask me is the same as a digital copy. See, we – PC gamers, have been through this decade ago and if we survived it, you will too.
As anything on the internet, there has been a lot of backlash and negative comments. Few of those comments are saying that everything is turning digital and that we own nothing. That they can take their back whenever and we have no say in it. And that if something were to happen to these Digital stores or cloud servers, we would lose a bunch of games forever. Sounds like a conspiracy theory of the mad man.
As much as it pains me to say this, I partially agree with them. I said partially. Is everything turning digital? Yes. Could something happen to digital stores and most of the games disappear? Maybe. Could they just take the game away? Technically, yes. The chances of the last two scenarios are possible but highly unlikely. These companies take utmost care of their servers and in order for something to happen to them, it would mean there’s been an apocalypse. And trust me, if that happens, you won’t be thinking what happens with your CS skins or anything like that. As for them taking your game, realistically that ain’t happening unless you were doing something extremely shady. Even then, I believe chances of that happening are low.
We already know why they are doing this and it all leads back to the good old dollar. Selling digitally cuts any unnecessary cost which leads to bigger profit margins, it’s simple as that. I don’t blame them… It’s nothing personal…
Anyways, all of that got me thinking. How can we bring back a little bit of the past, ensure that nothing happens to these games, and make being a gamer more exciting.
I’ve made an executive decision that we should start putting games on encrypted USB 3.2 Flash Drives. Instead of getting rid of all physical games, I say push it to bring them back. Let’s create a petition where companies should always offer the option to get physical copy for newer games. I feel like this task isn’t impossible. It works for PC, Playstation, and XBOX. And I believe the prices of physical copies wouldn’t increase more than $15 to $20 per copy of the game.
Secondly, I believe that they should put more effort and care into those flash drives aka every flash drive should be uniquely designed to fit a game that’s meant for. For example: The upcoming Wolverine game should come in a USB in the shape of wolverines mask. Or the GTA 6 should arrive in the shape of Infernus.
Or if the Playstation really wants to keep it on a down low, they can just make Astrobot a main design for their USBs. That way they can mass produce for cheaper and we still get what we want. On a few special occasions, if they feel generous they could throw a specially designed Astrobot, you know, like they did in the game. Imagine getting a new God of War game on a USB stick and its Astrobot Faye. How cool would that be? We have less than a year to make this happen.
Imagine the possibilities that would come with this. Just imagine how glorious of a collection you could possess. I strongly believe that every gamer would agree to something like that. On top of that, it would show that gaming companies “care” about their playerbase. I believe that gaming will reach a new pinnacle if this happens.
So let us be the wind of change…
