Today started off with not so good news. Not really surprising to anyone, Sony has officially responded to the outrage and backlash over their decision to end physical media. Essentially, Sony CEO Lin Tao's words read to me as any typical CEO would do: "We heard you. We just don't care." I've already accepted the fact that physical gamers were spreadsheeted out. Sony's already looked at all the numbers and figured there's enough digital-only gamers to keep them afloat. Maybe they're right, but that doesn't help me feel any better as a customer. As a fan, I feel scorned.
I will be honest. I'm not taking this very well at all. I've had three previous blogs I chose to delete. Some of you may have read them. I chose to delete them because they came off too negative, and I ultimately wasn't happy with them. This one isn't that positive in of itself, but at least it won't have any cursing in it this time. This blog will also serve as part of a process to better get a grip on my mental health and temperament when interacting with my community online.
Again, I will be honest. I haven't been proud of my behavior. Whether it's on Facebook, Twitter (I will never call it X), or YouTube, I've engaged with - and poorly - the opposition pushing back on us physical gamers wanting to preserve our media. I just won't understand why there is pushback on us for wanting to preserve our rights, and not being able to understand why here's such a lack of empathy and a surplus of apathy regarding the topic has produced a lot of frustration. I hate that there's a civil war developing in our community over physical versus digital. I think some people think that physical gamers are against digital media. and I'd like to believe that most of us aren't; we just want to the option of physical to stay.
If you don't know, there's currently a planned protest running from August 23rd through August 30th. You would think as passionate as I am about this topic, I would be participating, except I don't like the idea of blackout-style boycotts; I just don't think they work. All these boycotts do is tell companies when they'll be back. The only effective boycott is one where the consumer stops giving the company money entirely until the company capitulates to their demands. I'm also reminded of the blackout boycott against Big Oil in 2011 that had people not going to gas stations on April 15th. What happened was the oil companies saw spikes in profit on April 14th and 16th. And well, what are you going to do? You need gas in your car. None of these protesters had the conviction to sell their cars and just use public transit or get a bike. Blackout boycotts just don't work.
What works is promising the company you're not going to give them your money. The perfect example of this is the Xbox One protest of 2013 when Don Mattrick not only announced that the Xbox One would be an always-online device, but effectively an attack on the used game market by controlling the rights to the games on disc and making used game stores check in with MS so MS could take a portion of all used game sales. There was also the policy of the Kinect needing to be included and connected to the Xbox One along with the gaslighting from MS saying it just wouldn't work without it, and there was nothing they could do about it. And of course, there was the infamous Sony PSA about how to share PS4 games
So, we revolted. We not only voted with our wallets, we spoke out. We let MS know that we weren't going to buy their upcoming Xbox One, and they saw our conviction by the lack of preorders. When you tell a company you're not going to give them money and you stay true to your word, you'll be surprised how quickly a company will change their tune. They reversed all the policies we didn't like, and I went out and preordered an Xbox One that day.
I think that's what most of us protesting hoped was going to happen. If enough of us said we were weren't going to buy a PS6, surely they would listen to us! I mean, we flooded every single social media post Sony made, whenever they made them, and a lot of game companies caught strays as a result. Some smaller indies even saw their announcements of their new upcoming games drowned out completely. I even used my own graphic when I was protesting.
We were everywhere. And we made our voices heard. But, there was one thing that caused our voices to fall on deaf ears and that was the absolutely crazy success of GTA 6 preorders. Within its first week, Rockstar sold over 50 million copies, and this included the "physical" editions that were nothing more than a code in a box. I'm pretty sure Sony wanted to make the announcement they were killing physical media sooner, but they were waiting on Rockstar to start selling GTA 6 to prove to shareholders and say, "Look! See? They say they want physical media, but they'll buy it digitally!" So clearly, Sony thinks they can get away with it. Maybe they will...
I'm very curious how well the PlayStation 6 will sell in terms of preorders. I just think it has too many things against it. For one, there won't be a disc drive, so us collectors are out. For two, the cost is going to be prohibitively expensive. I'm thinking it's going to start at 1,200 at least. For three, there's nothing in their pipeline past Intergalactic, so what's the point of buying a PS6 when everything will still be on 5. Also, there's this:
This is visual interpretation of a patent Sony recently filed showing an all-digital controller. There are no physical buttons; it's all one unbroken surface. The idea is that you can program and position your buttons wherever you want, and on paper, that sounds awesome. But in practicality, I think it's a bad idea. I've played mobile games before, and I don't really like touch screen controllers that much, because fingers tender to wander. I prefer tactile buttons so your fingers can feel where they are and feel the resistance of the buttons. I don't even think the best haptic feedback will be a replacement for good old fashion physical button tech.
Sony says they aren't feeling any negative impact on their business since the announcement of getting rid of their discs. Well, we'll see what happens when the PS6 underperforms during preorders. They'll no longer to have to answer to us, the customers; they'll need to answer to their shareholders.
So, where does this leave me? I was prepared to leave behind Grand Theft Auto VI, because I was planning on waiting them out and hoping Rockstar would press a physical copy (or Limited Run or iam8bit or anybody), but well, that's not going to happen at all. Missing out on one game? Easy. Yet, if I really care this much about my physical media, that means I have to miss out on an entire console generation. I've been buying systems at launch since the very first PlayStation (technically, the SNES if you count launch windows) and PlayStation has always held a very special place in my heart; it's where I spend the most of my hours gaming on. Now, I feel betrayed. I feel discarded. I feel... defeated.
Gaming has always brought me joy. Just sheer joy. Nevermind the amount of times where I got frustrated and angry enough to break a controller, a game, or an entire Vita. It's just been my number one source of entertainment and I've loved collecting it in physical form. I mostly always bought new because I enjoyed the feeling of cutting open the cellophane, popping out the disc and reading the manual (although manuals have been gone for years). Now, I look at the future of Sony, and I see... nothing. I can't hold a digital game in my hands. I can no longer get that feeling of pride of sliding a case into my shelf and watch my collection grow. Instead, I'll have to worry about whatever license holder suddenly develops a conflict with Sony, and Sony reaches into my PS6 and yoinks the data away. Or heaven forbid be the extremely unlucky guy who has his PSN account hacked, and Sony decides to delete the account versus fixing it...
So, I will overcome the FOMO. The PS6 as it stands is extremely unattractive. No discs; no games; no buttons on their controller; no chance of being affordable. It has nothing for me, and that's going to soften the blow. We'll see how I feel after the PS6 has been out for a few years, if they have exclusives good enough to override my willpower and let the FOMO claim me. Or, they could end up earning me as a customer again if they would just let us back up our games like PC gamers have done for years...
What I've decided I'm going to do now is add to my rainy day backlog. If I haven't linked it before, you can check it out here. I just recently bought a Game Gear with a flash card that has 500 Game Gear games and 500 Master System games, and I've acquired an Xbox 360 Slim after fearing to turn on my OG 360 and watching it suddenly RROD. I plan on buying a whole bunch of 360 games and also plan on doing some Vita shopping before Sony finally closes the doors for good on the store. AFter Wolverine, which was already preordered with reward points, every PlayStation game going forward will be bought used so Sony no longer gets my money. This also means no more buying fancy schmancy PS5 controllers, which was starting to be a problem. If I want to buy a game new, I'll buy it on Xbox or Switch 2. Or hell, I might even invest in a gaming laptop and do GOG and Steam (how I would have loved Steam to have been cheaper, but that's another blog.)
It's hard letting go, and like I said, I've been with PlayStation for 31 years now. I knew digital was slowly overtaking physical, but that's not the point. Physical, contrary to popular belief, is not dead. Visit your local library and see how many DVDs and CDs they still have. By the way, they have books, which will never stop being printed. People still enjoy physical. People still want physical. Physical is still profitable. Hell, charge us an extra 10 dollars for a physical copy to make up for the 1 dollar it costs to press a piece of plastic.
It's just, I don't like the way this was handled. I don't like how they announced their decision in an emotionally devoid blog ironically ending with their slogan, "Play Has No Limit." I don't like how Sony mislead us with skewed numbers. I don't like how they aggressively gag ordered their employees to not talk about the situation, or how they claim Blu-Ray is dying when in reality they just wanted to invest in AI microlenses. I don't like how they've ignored us, and I especially don't like how Lin Yao finally addressed us in a very verbose way of essentially telling us to "deal with it." If that's how you really feel about us then, Sony, we'll move on. Thanks for the memories. You'll still always have the best system start up sound in history (PS1).
