So Sony just made the call and I am genuinely torn on this because it is both a smart business move and absolutely devastating for anyone who values owning their games. They've launched two PS5 Pro SKUs (SKU number 42734001 and another) but one of them is strictly digital — there's no plan to offer disc versions at all, and even more infuriating, there are zero plans for a future disc-edition SKU either. If you bought your console specifically for the disk drive so you could collect, resell later, or keep a physical library, that's effectively gone. But here is the real kicker — this mirrors exactly what Epic did with the Game Store when they asked to remove their 30% cut from existing titles in exchange for charging on new sales; Sony is basically saying "you can have your old purchases but you pay for future ones via our ecosystem," which sounds like a classic walled-garden maneuver.
And it's not just this one decision — the whole industry is moving toward the subscription model at breakneck speed. Ubisoft is pushing Game Pass aggressively, EA and Activision are making multiplayer modes mandatory after two years of single-player play for games that launched exclusively as offline experiences, and Tencent's mobile game strategy has essentially removed traditional ownership from the equation entirely. The only real outlier is Microsoft; you can still buy physical copies of Xbox exclusives on both console and PC because they chose not to lock it down. Sony could have offered a hybrid model or at least one discounted disc bundle but decided that full digital commitment was the right financial move, which tells you everything about where their long-term priorities lie beyond just hardware sales.
Here's the kicker: even Europe can't stop them because EU law already lets companies decide how they package and sell games. The Commission literally issued a statement saying "companies are free to offer games and services in the manner they see fit," which is politician speak for "we know this sucks but it isn't illegal." There was no crackdown, no penalty — just a statement that acknowledges your frustration without doing anything about it. So moving forward we should expect more companies following Sony's lead as subscription revenue proves its worth on their balance sheets. We'll have to rely on community archives and preservation groups rather than official retailers for our physical copies now, which is going to be the story of 2025 and beyond.
Source: https://www.ign.com/articles/eu-says-its-powerless-to-stop-PlayStation-from-killing-discs
And it's not just this one decision — the whole industry is moving toward the subscription model at breakneck speed. Ubisoft is pushing Game Pass aggressively, EA and Activision are making multiplayer modes mandatory after two years of single-player play for games that launched exclusively as offline experiences, and Tencent's mobile game strategy has essentially removed traditional ownership from the equation entirely. The only real outlier is Microsoft; you can still buy physical copies of Xbox exclusives on both console and PC because they chose not to lock it down. Sony could have offered a hybrid model or at least one discounted disc bundle but decided that full digital commitment was the right financial move, which tells you everything about where their long-term priorities lie beyond just hardware sales.
Here's the kicker: even Europe can't stop them because EU law already lets companies decide how they package and sell games. The Commission literally issued a statement saying "companies are free to offer games and services in the manner they see fit," which is politician speak for "we know this sucks but it isn't illegal." There was no crackdown, no penalty — just a statement that acknowledges your frustration without doing anything about it. So moving forward we should expect more companies following Sony's lead as subscription revenue proves its worth on their balance sheets. We'll have to rely on community archives and preservation groups rather than official retailers for our physical copies now, which is going to be the story of 2025 and beyond.
Source: https://www.ign.com/articles/eu-says-its-powerless-to-stop-PlayStation-from-killing-discs