Journal of Other Forum Analysis (Volume II, Issue 2)

[Straight Edge]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/physical-disc-production-ending-in-january-2028-for-new-games-releasing-on-playstation-consoles.1565773/page-12

Fucking AI

[who is ted danson?]

Xbox is kill
Sony physical is kill
All hardware +30% in price every year for the next 5 years

Meanwhile Switch 2 is the same price, physical games continue and everyone gets  10% raise  

[D3RANG3D]

Can you even make a physical disc of a game that never existed...?

[Alpacx]

Genuinely can't remember the last physical game I bought. Possibly Spider-Man 2.

I think the last physical game I bought was Civilization V.

It was a game box with a Steam code inside.

[cRumB]

It's AI fault
It's GTA fault
It's Trump fault

Dumbasses, all that talk of leaving gaming/Sony it doesn't matter, all they know is consoooom and will be coming back like pigs to slop when Bloodborne HD Remix Edition gets announced as a PS6 exclusive.

[Lonewulfeus]

  It would be absolutely hysterical if Microsoft pivots to keeping physical around this time.

They were ready to pull the plug on physical discs until there was backlash to codes in a box for Outer Worlds 2 and Ninja Gaiden 4. I'm not sure if those discs actually had the games on them or just granted access to the download though. 

Honestly, the amount of space at big-box retailers for Xbox stuff is already incredibly small compared to what it was 10 years ago, and that's in the US which is their biggest market. I don't see a way back for them on that front, even if they did try to reverse course.

Yea I don’t think it would be easy, they’d have to actually commit to it but the opportunity is there and if Sony is dead set on killing physical then it’s probably Microsoft’s best chance to right their ship.

[Greatness Gone]

Sony killing physical media so they can charge 89.99 for shit like horizon 3. 

Ree Soyny ponies had so much time to switch to PC but were too busy saying using one was too complicated/you couldn’t do comfy couch gaming on one. Now look.

[Jansen]

I'm sEEING a lot of fault spread around but none of you have mentioned the true enemy - CHUDS

[Jansen]

Sony killing physical media so they can charge 89.99 for shit like horizon 3. 

Ree Soyny ponies had so much time to switch to PC but were too busy saying using one was too complicated/you couldn’t do comfy couch gaming on one. Now look.

waiting to see how transistor feels 

[Lonewulfeus]

Genuinely can't remember the last physical game I bought. Possibly Spider-Man 2.

I think the last physical game I bought was Civilization V.

It was a game box with a Steam code inside.

I bought 2 physical games in the last 2 years, Infinite Wealth and Borderlands 4.  I didn’t end up playing Infinite Wealth until it was on gamepass and I still haven’t had time for Borderlands 4.

[Uncle]

Xbox is kill
Sony physical is kill
All hardware +30% in price every year for the next 5 years

Meanwhile Switch 2 is the same price, physical games continue and everyone gets  10% raise  

the switch 2 is increasing in price shortly, they just happened to announce it was happening a long time ago

[benji]

Not sure why I should care about reselling a game or getting discounts, maybe pay artists the full value of what they're worth instead of trying to steal part of their art?

[Boredfrom]

Honestly, the only thing that would keep me in the Play Station ecosystem is if they actually improved their classic games support and rereleases to PS3 levels.  

Probably should finally learn to build a PC, even with current prices.

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

wow look at everyone licking the boots of genocide box now

how about not playing video games and investing your time and money into your local community?

[Jansen]

I'm sure this will end up being a nothing burger, but are the posts who are gleefully bragging about the end of physical discs in the face of people who have real concerns about it subject to any moderation? It feels a little gross to me reading some of the comments on the PS thread that seem to be doing just that towards users who are very upset.

BAN THEM 
BAN THEM ALL

[Greatness Gone]

Bruh, at this point a prebuilt PC with Steam OS is going to be just as small, just as plug and play, and just as expensive, but with third party key sellers, way more games and no stupid online fee bullshit.

[NekoFever]

My most recent physical purchase for a current console was Elden Ring earlier this year. Never bought it back when it came out. £20 for the disc. It’s currently £50 on PSN and the all-time low for digital is £30. People think this is a good thing.

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

My actual most recent physical purchase is a PS2 copy of Time Crisis 3

[Jansen]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/collecting-video-games-can-be-as-much-fun-as-playing-them-feels-like-the-other-half-of-our-hobby-is-dying.1566157/

The thread title.

[Boredfrom]

My actual most recent physical purchase is a PS2 copy of Time Crisis 3 

Based.

[Jansen]

Hi folks, I'm LordHuffnPuff. You may know me for being one of Resetera's Worst Posters™ but in the real world I do a bunch of other things, including running a game studio, a digital arts nonprofit, and serving as full-time permanent university faculty in games and animation.



Right now, one of the largest hurdles that we have with students who want to get into games in some capacity is access. Before I taught in games, I worked in an English Literature department. We assigned specific readings for each class, the students read them [ideally], wrote about them, and discussed them. Students acquired these texts in one of two ways: either as scanned PDFs excerpted from longer works (which we as faculty can provide legally as part of the fair use education carve-out) or by purchase. The average course might cost around $30 in book materials as a result. Students could get books out of the library for free.



Last semester, I taught a humanities-style course on Game Writing and Narrative Design. This was a very popular course. It alternated between readings, games and hands-on scripting/programming tutorials. The general flow went like this:

Read a Text (usually a classic work of literature or theory) -> Play a Game (inspired by concepts in the older works) -> Learn a new Engine/Tool (Twine, Ink, Ren'Py)



Because games are art and exist within a cultural context, students need to understand where the games they like come from. In the English department, this was easy, because we knew that irrespective of a student's high school background, they were coming in with some baseline knowledge. They had read a novel before. They knew what a poem was. They probably had read at least one Shakespeare play. And so forth.



In a games program, you can't guarantee anything. Yes the students may love to play games, but they haven't had a grounding in any sort of canonical works, they may not have heard of famous titles or even played things you might expect. Many students haven't ever really touched the original Super Mario Bros., for example, even if the are aware of it. What this means is that this context-building is especially important because you're building the groundwork that their entire understanding of the field needs to rest upon.



For context, here are the games that I assigned last semester, along with their current prices on Steam at time of posting this thread. We are in the middle of the Steam Summer Sale, so prices are pretty good, but come the school year this will not be the case for many titles. Games are divided into mandatory plays (which must be played to pass the class) and "Level-Ups" which students may optionally choose to play a few of if they want to finish with a higher grade:



Mandatory Games:

80 Days – Inkle, 2014 - $3.89 (Reg. $12.99)

Bioshock – 2K Games, 2007 - $4.99 (Reg. $19.99)

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition – Wizards of the Coast, 2014 - $29.99 (pdf from WotC)

Journey – thatgamestudio, 2012 - $3.74 (Reg. $14.99)

Return of the Obra Dinn – Lucas Pope, 2018 - $19.99

Victory Garden – Stewart Moulthrop, 1991 - $0 (free in browser! hooray!)

Planetarian: The Reverie of a Little Planet – Key, 2004 - $3.99 (Reg. $9.99)



Subtotal: $66.59 (Reg: $107.94)



Level-Ups

Disco Elysium – ZA/UM, 2019 - $3.99 (Reg. $39.99)

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth – Square Enix, 2024 - $19.99 (Reg. $49.99)

Her Story – Sam Barlow, 2015 - $4.99 (Reg. $9.99)

That Dragon, Cancer – Numinous Games, 2016 - $9.99

What Remains of Edith Finch – Giant Sparrow, 2017 - $4.99 (Reg. $19.99)



Subtotal: $43.95 (Reg: $129.95)



Total: $ 110.54 (Reg. $237.89)



Now some caveats: these prices are all pre-tax, so the real totals are somewhat higher. Students do not need to purchase every Level-Up game, two or three for the semester is enough to get full credit. Some students own other platforms, like a Switch, where they might grab a better deal occasionally. Some games will always be on sale at any time, so the "real" cost of the materials for this course will be between the supersale price and the regular price. So let's say the average student is paying... oh, I don't know, let's peg it at $125 for the games this semester.



If you did a STEM major, you may be thinking something like "that's not so bad, my chemistry textbook cost $300!" It sure did. But I bet you had options to buy that textbook used at a massive discount, or you could rent it from the school store for a fraction of the face price. Maybe an upperclassman let you borrow their copy. There were options.



This also does not include the cost of the hardware you need to run games - ever student needs a gaming-capable laptop. And again, this is just one class! Most students are taking 4-5 courses a semester with comparable materials costs, whether it's other games, software licensing fees for things like Adobe Creative Cloud or Toon Boom Harmony, or other costs. This is financially unsustainable for most of my students. They've already taken out massive loans to simply be in the classroom, and now there are hundreds of dollars in software fees being dumped on them. 



So what can be done? Well, a few things, historically. 



For years, I have run a lending library for students in my program. There is a spreadsheet with hundreds (thousands? I haven't counted) of physical video games and consoles available for students to borrow, free. But of course, they need the hardware to play them - a PS5 game isn't useful if the student doesn't have a PS5. I've tried to address this as well; if the game and/or console is crazy expensive, they can schedule a time to come to my office and play it so it doesn't risk being stolen. I have a CRT set up for old consoles for this purpose. This is a solution that serves one (1) student per game at a time, but at least it's something. Colin Post, an Assistant Professor of Library and Information Science at the University of North Carolina – Greensboro, is working on a long-term initiative backed by the nonprofit I run to research how we can preserve games in libraries more effectively. It's slow going.



We could buy "University" copies of these games on "University" Steam accounts, set them up on computers in a controlled lab, and let students schedule time to come in and play that way. This is how I did it in the past, but it's simply not a very good solution unless you're buying a dozen copies of every game. Two copies of each title (which is what we had the departmental budget for) means two students can play, and their time slots are maybe an hour or two. Not so great if you want them to play Bioshock to completion! There are 20 or more students in a class!



Basically neither of these solutions are very good, but they're better than nothing. We are constantly struggling to make this work, and major video game companies have shown less than zero interest in working with Universities on this problem. That is to say nothing of poor high school teachers who have even less pull. Generally, book publishers have worked in partnership with schools to provide desk copies of books and bulk discounts, but that is not the case when it comes to books.



Now, the elimination of physical discs by Sony, combined with the shuttering of digital storeplaces, threatens our ability to teach the medium (which increasingly is how new developers get their start). This isn't a question of losing art or preservation - these games aren't going anywhere for the most part - it's one of educational resources in an actual classroom setting. We obviously cannot encourage piracy, though I am certain many of my students are resorting to sailing the high seas to keep costs down. Of course, Sony, the impetus for this post because of today's news, is a business and at the end of the day the bottom line is all that matters.... but the consequences threaten to damage not just our ability to teach, but the quality of experience and education to which future developers and designers have access.




Sorry this was long but there's a lot.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-all-digital-future-is-a-nightmare-for-educators-scholars-librarians-and-more.1566163

[Let's Cyber]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/with-sony-announcing-its-retreat-from-physical-media-what-does-your-long-term-gaming-plan-look-like.1566055/#post-157279357

[TylenolJones]

Who cares about physical games? I’m worried that this is all a plan to get rid of 4k blu ray movies.

[HaughtyFrank]

[who is ted danson?]

Who cares about physical games? I’m worried that this is all a plan to get rid of 4k blu ray movies.

This. What a disaster. And I just ordered another 4x 4k discs.

Nothing quite like the deafening sound on Interstellar in 4k + surround sound

[Lonewulfeus]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/with-sony-announcing-its-retreat-from-physical-media-what-does-your-long-term-gaming-plan-look-like.1566055/#post-157279357

So he’s at his baseline emotional state.  

[who is ted danson?]

$1000 PS6

$100 Launch games

Gamestop selling $200 editions that are toys + Code in a box.

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO GAMING REEEEEEEEEEE

[DavidCroquet]

I just can't believe all of these dorks don't have a digital collection that far outnumbers whatever 5-10 physical discs they have on their shelf collecting dust.

In any case I can see Sony backing off this idea quickly. My 3D chess theory is that they're announcing this now as cover for the PS3/Vita store shutdowns, which created an insane shitstorm (over an all-digital store platform, curious!) back when they tried it a few years ago.

[benji]

Right now, one of the largest hurdles that we have with students who want to get into games in some capacity is access. Before I taught in games, I worked in an English Literature department. We assigned specific readings for each class, the students read them [ideally], wrote about them, and discussed them. Students acquired these texts in one of two ways: either as scanned PDFs excerpted from longer works (which we as faculty can provide legally as part of the fair use education carve-out) or by purchase. The average course might cost around $30 in book materials as a result. Students could get books out of the library for free.

Last semester, I taught a humanities-style course on Game Writing and Narrative Design. This was a very popular course. It alternated between readings, games and hands-on scripting/programming tutorials. 
...
Now, the elimination of physical discs by Sony, combined with the shuttering of digital storeplaces, threatens our ability to teach the medium (which increasingly is how new developers get their start). This isn't a question of losing art or preservation - these games aren't going anywhere for the most part - it's one of educational resources in an actual classroom setting. We obviously cannot encourage piracy, though I am certain many of my students are resorting to sailing the high seas to keep costs down. Of course, Sony, the impetus for this post because of today's news, is a business and at the end of the day the bottom line is all that matters.... but the consequences threaten to damage not just our ability to teach, but the quality of experience and education to which future developers and designers have access.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-all-digital-future-is-a-nightmare-for-educators-scholars-librarians-and-more.1566163

Why don't you allow laptops in class?



Also lmao at that course title.

[Besticus Maximus]

This isn't a question of losing art or preservation - these games aren't going anywhere for the most part - it's one of educational resources in an actual classroom setting.

 LLM post

[benji]

This isn't a question of losing art or preservation - these games aren't going anywhere for the most part - it's one of educational resources in an actual classroom setting.

 LLM post

Also word for word his blog post:
https://jabortnick.com/2026/07/01/the-end-of-physical-video-games-threatens-games-education/