Well-known Japanese game producer Hideo Kojima expressed his views on Sony’s decision to stop producing new PlayStation game discs starting in January 2028. Kojima said that the discontinuation of physical discs is sad, but it is only the first step in digital transformation, and cloud gaming is the real nightmare, because by then the data will be completely out of the control of consumers.
“Since the production of physical discs will stop in 2028, although this is about video games, I grew up with physical media, so I still feel very regretful.
Lately, I've been buying a lot of Blu-ray movies and physical collections like CDs. The situation is slightly different with games, as the game is downloaded and installed to the hard drive, meaning that the game data is actually saved on your own hardware device.
But if there is a comprehensive shift to cloud gaming (Streaming) in the future, the situation will be completely different.
Streaming media subscription services like Netflix and Amazon essentially store content on remote servers, and users just have the right to "turn on the faucet" - when you turn it on, the data will be transferred from the server to your device. That's how movies work on these platforms. You don't download the data to yourself, but access it directly through a subscription service.
This also means that you don't actually own the data.
These servers are owned by companies, and they allow you to "turn on the faucet" for a monthly fee. However, considering national, political and various social environments, we have to consider the possibility that once the external environment changes, the content in the server may stop being provided.
If this happens, your favorite movies and games may no longer be available to watch or play.
This is where the real concern lies.
Therefore, it is entirely possible that the changes that video games will face in 2028 will also happen in the film industry in the future. I hope everyone can keep this in mind. "
From a consumer perspective, cloud licensing is indeed worse. But movies and TV series are far more likely to move to the cloud than games, with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and a host of other streaming services already dominating the home entertainment market. So far, cloud gaming hasn't really taken off like movies and TV series.
Interestingly, Kojima didn't hesitate to criticize the move despite his longstanding close relationship with Sony. As we all know, after he left Konami, Sony helped him establish Kojima Studio and even provided Guerrilla Games' Decima engine for the development of "Death Stranding." Additionally, while Kojima is currently focused on the Xbox-funded horror game OD, he has signed on for a new PlayStation exclusive, the Metal Gear-inspired Physint.