PlayStation shook and disoriented the video game industry when it revealed earlier this month that it had plans to cease the production of discs by January 2028. Of course, fans were quick to realize how bleak an all-digital PlayStation future might look, and the community has been ruminating on which games will be the last to be released with a genuine physical copy.
Grand Theft Auto 6’s preorders and edition reveals have started this trend off hot by choosing not to launch with a disc, only a code that comes in the physical case, but it seems as if PS4 and PS5 gamers are waiting for a ticking time bomb to explode in the future anyway. Based on studies that have been conducted, the future isn’t looking great for discs and physical media, no matter how fans slice it.
According to the Canadian Conservation Institute, as shared by GameRant, read-only Blu-ray discs (discs with pre-recorded digital data) may only last “10 to 20 years.” If so, we could hypothetically start to see PS4 discs degrade beyond repair or use by 2033, with PS5 discs equally susceptible to degradation in the same span. Likewise, as GameRant mentions, an interview with CCI Heritage Information Analyst Ern Bieman from 2014 basically corroborates this, explaining that there is no guarantee that such discs will still last after a 20-year period.
The PS5 is relatively young, with the console only turning six years old this November. This means that gamers should have quite a long shelf life for all of their respective physical copies of PS5 games (granted, great care must be taken with them in order for them to last that long, anyway).
This is obviously disheartening for gamers who consider themselves to be avid hobbyist collectors, whose hopes for preservation and ownership are slipping away at every turn lately. This isn’t necessarily novel news regarding Blu-ray technology, to be fair. All the same, it’s suddenly become a much larger issue now that the option to buy a physical copy of a game is being robbed from fans, who won’t even have a chance to get a new copy of a game that they already purchased if discs are no longer produced for new PlayStation games, old or new.
The CCI describes plenty of ways that we can care for and handle discs to better preserve them, but this is another bad PlayStation omen. Plus, 10 to 20 years might be a pipe dream, as the CCI notes that a failure to properly preserve and care for physical media could result in the “premature failure of discs, perhaps in as little as 2 to 10 years.”
- Founded
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October 3, 1994
- Owner
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Sony Interactive Entertainment
- Known For
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Uncharted, God of War, Horizon, The Last of Us,
PlayStation is a video game console brand developed and owned by Sony Interactive Entertainment, a division of the Japanese company Sony. Introduced in 1994, the brand includes home consoles along with handheld systems and online gaming services. It is one of the most commercially successful gaming brands worldwide.