Please Don’t Let Physical Games Die

With Sony recently announcing that new PlayStation games will no longer be released on physical discs starting in January 2028, I really hope this isn’t the beginning of the end for physical games.

And more importantly, I hope Microsoft and Nintendo don’t eventually follow suit.

Don’t get me wrong—I buy digital games. Digital is convenient. You click a button, download the game, and you’re playing without ever leaving your house.

But convenience isn’t enough for me to want physical media to disappear.

I Want to Actually Own My Games

There’s something fundamentally different about buying a physical copy of a game.

I can put it on my shelf. I can lend it to someone. I can take it to GameStop or a local game store and trade it toward something else. I can sell it. Years from now, I can pull an old console out of a closet, grab a game off the shelf, and hopefully play it again.

It’s my copy.

With digital games, what we think of as “buying” increasingly feels more like purchasing access to a license.

Maybe that distinction doesn’t matter to everyone, but it matters to me.

If I spend $70 on a game, I like having something tangible that represents that purchase—and something I can do what I want with afterward.

Physical Games Have Value After You Buy Them

This is another part of the digital transition that I don’t think gets enough attention.

Let’s say I buy a physical game for $70, finish it, and decide I’m probably never going to play it again.

I have options.

I can trade it in. Sell it online. Give it to one of my kids. Let a friend borrow it. Put it on the shelf and keep it for 20 years.

With a digital copy?

It sits in my account.

That’s it.

There isn’t a used digital game market. I can’t finish a game and trade my license toward another one.

Physical games create an entire secondary market that digital games simply don’t have.

And What About Game Preservation?

This might be my biggest concern.

Digital storefronts don’t last forever. Servers don’t last forever. Companies change policies, licenses expire, and eventually hardware stops being supported.

Physical media isn’t a perfect solution—especially now that games frequently need patches, updates, or additional downloads—but having actual game data preserved on physical media is still valuable.

Twenty years from now, I want people to be able to discover today’s games the same way we can still pick up an old NES, PlayStation, Xbox, or Game Boy game today.

I don’t want an entire generation of gaming history dependent on whether somebody’s authentication server still exists.

There’s One Thing Discs Can’t Really Fix Anymore: Storage

There’s another argument I’d love to make for physical games:

Why can’t I play the game from the disc and save all that SSD space?

Unfortunately, modern consoles make that difficult.

PS5 game discs can hold up to 100GB, but modern games need data much faster than an optical drive can deliver it. That’s why PS5 and Xbox Series X games generally install their data onto the console’s SSD even when you own the physical version. The disc essentially becomes the physical media containing the game and, once installed, proof that you own that copy.

That’s especially frustrating when games can take up well over 100GB and expanding console storage isn’t exactly cheap.

Nintendo’s cartridge-based approach shows that physical media doesn’t necessarily have to mean a traditional spinning optical disc, though. I’d love to see future consoles explore faster physical storage formats instead of abandoning physical games altogether.

Give me a cartridge, card, disc, or some new format capable of delivering the speeds modern games require.

I’d rather see the technology behind physical games evolve than watch physical games disappear.

Digital and Physical Can Coexist

That’s ultimately what bothers me about Sony’s decision.

I don’t have anything against digital games.

I just don’t understand why digital games have to mean the death of physical ones.

Let people choose.

If someone wants to buy every game digitally and never have another plastic case taking up space in their house, great.

If someone wants a shelf filled with games they’ve collected over the last 20 years, let them do that too.

Sony says the move reflects the industry’s shift toward digital purchases, and beginning in January 2028, newly released PlayStation games will be digital-only. Games released physically before the cutoff aren’t affected.

I just hope Sony ends up being the exception rather than the company everyone else follows.

Microsoft’s current Xbox Series X still supports UHD Blu-ray games, while Nintendo continues to support physical games on its hardware.

Hopefully that continues into their next generations.

Because sometimes convenience isn’t worth giving up ownership.