Investors Seem Happy with Sony Binning Physical Media

Video game fans worldwide might be furious over Sony's decision to scrap physical media for PlayStation systems, but that hasn't stopped the stock from soaring, pleasing the company's investors.

Sony has announced that it will stop making discs for PlayStation games in January 2028, meaning all titles released after that point will be digital-only. Naturally, both the gaming publicn and industry at large has responded poorly to this choice, as it removes actual ownership of games, and will pull the plug on the already struggling stores that specialize in physical releases.

Questions of ownership aside, the shift to digital is being treated as a positive by people within the industry. Investing.com has reported that Sony stock has risen 3.2% on the Tokyo Exchange in response to the news, with its US shares going up around 2.9%. This marks a huge win for the company, though it's unclear how long the uptick will last.

Sony Is Making Way More Money With The Shift To Digital

The main reason why Sony is moving away from discs is that most gamers have already made the move to digital, preferring instant access to waiting for physical media to arrive. If discs were as popular as they used to be, then Sony would still be making them.

Now that Sony is moving away from discs, it no longer needs to produce them, nor the boxes and inserts that come with them. Sony also doesn't need to split any of the costs associated with shipping and selling the games, meaning it gets to keep all the money from its titles, which is why the investors love the change so much.

The question now is whether the change will have long-term repercussions for Sony? There are already people talking about abandoning PlayStation systems over the change, as they won't actually own their games anymore. Whether they stick to it remains to be seen, especially if the industry as a whole follows suit, as the alternative is just not playing video games any more.

Comparisons have already been made to digital PC gaming stores like Steam, which have never offered physical releases. The difference between PlayStation and Steam is that Sony keeps shutting down its servers for older systems, as newer ones are cycled in. This means entire libraries of games are no longer available for sale with each console generation.

Sony's shift to digital could also draw the ire of lawmakers. If the company is only offering titles that people don't fully own, then that could lead to laws being introduced that force the company to ensure that people always have access to older titles, which is something that could bite them in the long run, especially if they need to maintain servers for older titles in the process.

The PlayStation 6 is likely still a year away at the earliest, and Sony has every reason to delay it, thanks to the ongoing memory crisis jacking up hardware prices. This will give the company plenty of chances to change course and introduce a disc-drive, with a return to physical media. However, it would take something severe to force the decision, and the most likely chance of that is people not ordering the PlayStation 6.

While physical media have been on the downswing in popularity since the PlayStation 4 era, there's still a huge place for them in the industry, as plenty of people want to actually own their games. Sony might be seeing short-term gains with its decision to ditch discs, but it could alienate enough fans to make a difference, going into an era where people could already be turned off by the high price of a new system.