In a gesture of protest for Sony recently announcing that they’ll be shutting down production of discs from January 2028 which will basically mark the end of physical media as we know it, many Playstation 5 owners are currently cancelling their PlayStation Plus subscriptions. However, despite the overwhelming negative response from both gamers and other industry outlets, there won’t be any change in Sony’s decision, according to multiple analysts.
Speaking to IGN, Dr. Serkan Toto, CEO of Japanese game industry consultancy firm Kantan Games, has said that even if half a million people cancelled their PlayStation Plus subscription in order to protest, it wouldn’t be enough for Sony to change it’s mind.
“I sympathize with physical media fans, but Sony will not reverse this decision,” Toto said, “they of course knew what the online reaction would look like, and they now wait for this storm to pass.
“Sony has over 120 million active PlayStation users,” he continued. “Around 50 million people subscribe to PlayStation Plus. As a thought experiment, let’s say 500,000 cancel in protest, that would be just 1% of that business gone — of course not enough to Sony to start rethinking. Digital is just too lucrative.”
“Their current profit margin has been too weak for years now, so they feel like they must act,” Toto concluded. “From an economic perspective, digital sales just make too much sense especially for platform holders.”
Daniel Ahmad, Director of Research & Insights at Niko Partners, via a post on X/Twitter has stated the following on the current situation:
“I do think Sony will respond in some capacity given the backlash (and tbh they shouldn’t have announced this until they were ready to disclose how discs would work on PS6),”also adding “but I’d be surprised if they do a full reversal at this point.”
One of the problems of the complete loss of physical media is that it’ll give players far less control over their owned videogames and can essentially remove all sense of ownership and rights which in turn leaves all of that in the hands of the publishers. This also takes away all sense of freedom of playing that gamers have towards their owned copies which is damning in more ways than one, making the industry move one step closer to a centralized, authoritarian model where huge corporations have all the control while the players have almost none.
