Sony’s abrupt decision to completely destroy physical media in the long run, insofar as it pertains to its own platform(s), has been quite a PR disaster for the company. No matter what it posts, even so many months later, comments are absolutely swamped with “no disc, no buy” statements, some of which get even more traction than whatever it was Sony was advertising.
And that could be having an impact on the company, despite its oppressive silence on the matter. Recently, PlayStation started collecting information from developers via a questionnaire about the discs and appears to be interested in analyzing feedback to determine whether or not it’s going to stick to its “no discs past 2028” plan.
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Now, according to the chief executive of Nippon Ichi Software, Kenzo Saruhashi, Sony is “hearing a lot of the feedback from customers” and may actually change its tune eventually. Speaking with Kotaku, Saruhashi, whose company is heavily dependent on producing physical versions of its games, said that boxes with codes might be “one possibility” but that they’re having a continued discussion with Sony about what comes next.
“In our discussions with Sony so far, I think that they’re hearing a lot of the feedback from customers, and so while that may be one destination that we arrive at, it’s possible that the discussion may change in the future, so we’ll have to see what happens [and] what comes of it,” Saruhashi said.
He didn’t have too much to add on the subject, and I don’t blame him. Sony’s been very, very unpredictable lately, and if any market hates anything, it’s not knowing what’s around the corner. Killing discs on its own part would be no problem if Sony weren’t one of the main owners of Blu-ray technology, meaning it could very well be locking competitors out of using this incredible tech and thus killing physical media to an extreme degree.
Whether that could be considered anti-trust or anti-competitive is being investigated by several courts worldwide, and there are some jurisdictions looking into Sony’s restrictive store policies as well.
Those legal proceedings could very well save physical discs from an almost-certain doom, but it could be that Sony realized the error of its ways and decided that this isn’t a goal worth pursuing just yet.
