On the end of PlayStation disks

Sony recently announced that they are going to cease all production of physical disks for the PS5 in 2028.  Given that they are a market leader, and given the overhead of producing physical disks and cartridges that I am sure most game companies would be happy to do away with altogether, this means that within a few years production of physical media for new games is likely to be dead in the water.  Damien Schubert over at Zen of Design has a thought provoking piece up about why he is perfectly ok with it.  He certainly makes a lot of interesting points. 

There are even two points I completely agree with.  First off, it's not as if you can really fit a modern game on a disk anyway, at least not something like Call of Duty and other mainstream titles from major developers.  It’s been true for some time that the disk is basically a large security key. You pop in the disk, and then your console proceeds to download anything up to a tenth of a terabyte of data.  Hell, I sometimes even get annoyed that I have to put the disk into my PS5 to run a game that's already installed on the local drive.  I also agree with “screw GameStop”  and how they deal with used games.  If you have ever shopped there, there is a good chance you agree.

However, that's about where my agreement ends.  I am a huge fan of the secondary market because I am a game collector, both modern and vintage.  It's perhaps ironic because, as I stated in my last post, when I sit down to play anything 90% of the time it's purchased digitally and installed on my PC.  But I still love collecting games.  I have a ton of consoles in my closet that come out when I have a wild hair.  I also love hunting for bargains and things I meant to own back in the day but still don't.  I once bought a Genesis just so I could play a copy of Shadowrun I found in a used game store.  Had a hell of a lot of fun with it too.  Hunting at flea markets, thrift stores, and in local retail spaces that look a lot like Game X-change has always been an important part of my life.  For me personally, a console where I can’t go shopping for bargains on used games may as well not exist. This all but ensures that the PS5 will be the last console from Sony I own.* 

Now there is another side to this coin of course.  A game developer makes exactly zero dollars on a game you buy at a flea market.  Game developers in general are also really struggling.  The market here in the US is going through a major contraction.  But I think, perhaps unfairly, that the side of the coin that has consumers on it is more important overall.  If you aren’t an owner you are a renter. Part of ownership is being able to sell something if you wish.  

From an overall societal perspective, I think the good that comes from being able to buy something and own it forever supersedes the pennies a game developer might make if people are forced to wait for major bargains on gaming platforms like the PlayStation network.  I personally never buy a game at full price, whether I get it digitally or via physical media.**  If a developer really needs my $1 when I buy a game for $10 five years after it comes out, or even the $1 of 10,000 of me in aggregate, they have bigger issues they need to tackle than whether people are bypassing digital storefronts via the used game market.  An indie studio might very well need that.  But the used game market also doesn't affect small indie studios that might actually need 1/5 of the low-end annual salary of a developer because they don't usually do physical releases in the first place.

Another argument I see over and over again is "Well digital media formats change, and media degrades over time anyway."  There is a lot of truth  in the first part of that argument.  In the PC space especially, there has been a constant blur of formats.  I had a ton of stuff on media like floppy disks and zip disks I threw out years ago (some to my slight regret if I'm honest).  Consoles have also changed formats often enough over time, at least the ones from Nintendo, to require you to either have one in a closet or buy a special reader at some point so you can use the game data with an emulator.  However, regardless of whether it's easy, once I own a game I absolutely can play it if I really want to.  More importantly, I can gift it or sell it if I wish.  The vintage gaming market is expanding over time as geezers like me enter our peak earning years.  More and better ways to access all that vintage media are coming online all the time.  

The second part of the argument always completely baffles me.  While I know that disk rot is a really thing, I personally have almost never been affected by it.  Literally the only instance I can remember was some data on a writable CD.  While I acknowledge that disk rot exists, from my experience it is insanely rare. Certainly I would say the idea that professionally produced digital media fails with any kind of regularity is a complete myth. I have never had a physical disk fail if it worked when I purchased it, and I have an absolutely enormous collection of CDs, DVDs, and Blue Rays. I also recently watched a Godzilla movie on a 35 year old VCR tape. Air conditioned storage space, low humidity, done.

Finally, for me this is all embedded in much larger issues.  Over time it is becoming clear that buying access to something online means basically nothing.  I am sure you have all read about or experienced "purchases" getting yanked on a platform like Amazon.  I personally lost access to more than $200 worth of albums I bought on iTunes during the period when they were selling everything using a proprietary format that only iTunes can play and only if you pass a license check.  Without going into detail, in the early 2000s I wasn't all that great at keeping track of various digital accounts and I moved a hell of a lot. The work e-mail that would let me reset the account I bought them on hasn't existed for more than a decade, and by the time a PC change made me realize I had lost access it was already a done deal.  If I were willing to sit on a phone for upwards of an hour, perhaps I could fix it.  But I have been replacing any albums from that era with CDs anyway, so I haven't yet bothered.  Regardless, many of those albums I "bought" I essentially no longer own.

However, it's not just about digital media to me.  Digital media rights is part of the much larger issue of business interests pushing hard to turn us into a society of renters, rather than owners.  An owner only gives you money once, a renter gives you money potentially as long as they live.  In part because of this, from the full functionality of the absurdly expensive cars we buy to the roofs over our heads, it is becoming harder and harder to really own anything.  

Digital media is one of the few areas where it's still easy to push back on that trend. I personally have cut back on subscriptions and funneled the money I save into blue ray and DVD purchases.  I also seem to be far from the only one thinking along these lines.  Some manufacturers of physical media have seen increases in sales of more than 10,000% recently.   And then here comes Sony, taking an axe to one of the major pillars of that movement.  

I certainly can see both sides of the issue.  But on the balance, I am not a fan of Sony's move.

Edit: Here's a much funnier take all this than mine.

*Perhaps the last console altogether after the Switch 2, whihc I have been eyeing

**Project Gorgon excepted, and I really just wanted to hand the studio money.  I rebought the game, which I already had access to from Kickstarter, through Steam and bought the supporter's pack on top of that.  

On MMO stickiness and (happily) living in the past

The PC that I am typing this on is quite capable of playing modern games.  It cost a lot more than I would ever spend on one strictly for home use because I mainly use it for work. But when I am not doing things for my job with it, what do I play in my spare time?  Well let's see, since July 2025 I have been playing LoTRO. Before that it was SWTOR, and before that the most time was spent in DDO, EQ II and Guild Wars.  Yes, the original Guild Wars that came out in 2005. 

My problem, if you want to call it that, is that the only games I find "sticky" are MMORPGs. There was a whole back and forth about what that actually means that got me a nice little traffic bump a couple of years ago.  But in short I would define a MMORPG as a shared world with crunchy roleplaying game mechanics, where the mechanics are used at least in  part to help the world feel more "real", and that at the very least has some public areas where lot's of people can hang out together and socialize. I just don't find other types of games compelling for more than maybe a month at a time, regardless of how awesome they are.

For example, to my tastes Cyberpunk 2077 looks like the best offline game anyone has ever made or thought about making.  It's got a jaw-droppingly beautiful world you can run around in. It has deep storylines that play out differently depending on what choices you make.  It's set in a genre I love.  I even loved the PnP game it's based on back in the 1990s, and the cartoon prequel on Netflix is also  wonderful.  Perhaps most winningly, the RPG mechanics let you try out builds that do all sorts of stuff, from "kick down the doors and shoot everyone", to a close combat assassin, to someone that talks or hacks their way around most obstacles.  I would have been over the moon to play it when I was a console jockey in my 20s. 

But do I play it? Nope, of course not.  Once they ironed out all the launch issues, I bought the "all of it" edition for like $20 and installed it on my PS5.  It runs very well, and looks great on a TV I would have killed a busload of orphans for in the 90s/ early 2000s.* However,  I have played it for all of six hours.  Just long enough to confirm that it absolutely was just as awesome as I thought it would be.  I then immediately went back to whatever fugly decade+ old MMO I was playing at the time. Probably DDO.

For me the biggest issue with offline games is that they don't feel as "real" to me because none of the other NPCs are being run by real people.  The way that I play MMOs, this is also a genuinely stupid, or at least odd, concern.  For all the interaction I have the with other players they may as well be run by a computer. If world chat has something particularly interesting going on, or someone needs a pointer, I may pipe up there occasionally.  However, in general that's as much direct socializing as I do.  I mean why not play an offline game and hang out on discord or something?

I don't because direct social interactions are not really the point for me.  To me a MMO is like alternate digital universe that me and everyone else playing has decided to inhabit.  Other people being there makes it seem more alive and "real." Just seeing what outfits other players have on when I head into town is a delight.  I also love the indirect interactions I have with everyone on the server in the auction house.  "What can I get for this? Are there any crazy bargains on cosmetic pets today?"  Even if I never do it, I like the fact that if I cared to I could indeed group up with some people and have "an adventure."  It doesn't matter that I won't, as long as I could. 

Perhaps the most important thing for me is one that's also kind of subtle.  A player run character is hard to predict in the same way that real people are hard to predict.   NPCs tend to just stand around waiting for me to interact with them.  They feel like part of the graphics.  PCs on the other hand are always clearly doing their own thing, and don't really care what I am doing the same way that people in a grocery store don't.  I can interact with them if I want to. But they haven't been placed there by a developer for me to interact with, or as window dressing.  Only a very few offline games have tried to mimic that, and with generally limited success in my experience.  A team of developers with even the most expansive imagination can't really capture that feeling of a world inhabited by other people with their own individual intents.  That one small detail makes these worlds really pop for me.

In some ways my predilection is also a bit unfortunate.  It's not a style of game that is really growing or attracting a lot of attention any more.  For example, almost no-one is putting even moderate budgets behind new games in the MMOPRG genre.  Nor should they if I'm honest.  The market to support it isn't there anymore.  For example, the last really big one we got kind of just fizzled out.  I am not sure how many players it ended up with, but clearly New World did not have the kind of success needed to justify the budget that Amazon put behind it, or even to keep the servers running.  

It's gotten to the point that whenever I see someone get a Kickstarter for "the next big thing" in MMORPG space off the ground, I'm not really all that excited.  I just feel a little sorry for everyone that desperately wants this new thing to thrive.  If this guy couldn't do it, and I am sorry to say things are not looking promising for Star's Reach, whoever this new person no-one has even heard of that just "won" Kickstarter almost certainly can't.  It doesn't help much that kickstarted games are also often chasing nostalgia for other games that are still alive and playable.  If I am looking for that experience, I will just play the original game.**  

Beyond few teams having the needed expertise, budget to build something truly ambitious, or goals that don't put them in direct competition with games that are still going, the broader issue is that an online space where you can hang out with other people just isn't a novelty any more. Many many more games that allow you to do that than were available when I fell in love with this genre are available now.***  There is so very little that makes MMORPGs really stand out any more. 

Even if you want crunchy roleplaying mechanics  along with your shared digital social spaces, there are survival games that have you covered pretty well.*! And that is a genre that does seem to be thriving. There are numerous survival games that have RPG character progression mechanics.  They also often arguably do an ever better job than a typical MMO of simulating a real world, and let you hang out with characters run by other real people.  So why am I not playing more of those? 

I think it basically comes down to two issues.  One is that many of them are a little too grounded.  One of the things I love about MMOs are gob smacking experiences like exploring the Mines of Moria, flying into Coruscant, or participating in the Battle of Helm's Deep.  Games like Valheim or even Ark just don't tend to include set pieces like that, experiences that make you lean back and say "Wow, I can't believe I am here!"  Even if they do they generally don't have a anywhere near the variety that a 10+ year old game that's been under constant development can.  You just don't generally get something like the 800+ zones of Everquest, or the dozens of planets in SWTOR.   Beyond that, even if they did, a game where you manage a private server for thirty of your closest friends just doesn't  feel the same to me.*$  It feels more like a really well realized fantasy neighborhood or town than an Alternate World. 

However, in the end this issue doesn't really require this level of analysis.  This post is a really long-winded way of saying that offline games, and even online multiplayer survival RPGs that on paper do almost everything I like about MMORPGs better, don't suck me in and hold my attention like MMORPGs do. Dying genre or not, I doubt any other type of game ever will ever be as sticky to me! 

*That is, of course, my idea of a joke. 

**In fact, I have been getting a slight urge to fire up EQ again.  I often miss it, fugly graphics and all. 

***If you stop by here regularly, you will likely have noticed me going on and on and on about it!

*!At least if you are prepared to make every single thing you own out of digital rocks and sticks :-)  

*$While doing research for this post, I discovered that this may be a bit unfair.  In fact bespoke servers that host up to 1000 players at a time are actually out there.  30 is the maximum number of players on a default GTA 5 / GTAO server

The State of Gaming in 2026

 Via slashdot, Microsoft has hired a really influential analyist Mathew Ball (who I had never head of personally*) to get their X-Box division out of its slump.  They certainly need to do something, because the X-box is clearly getting its rear end handed to it on a plate by the PS5 and Switch 2.  However, that's not what I found interesting enough to put up one of my rare posts.  

The article links out to his slide presentation on the state of gaming in 2026.  I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it yet, it's absolutely fascinating.  Among other things, it explains why layoffs are happening all over the US gaming development sector despite gaming revenue being at an all time high globally.  

My major takehomes from it:

1. US developers are getting crippled by their myopia. Developing games only for peaple with the very highest end hardware in the Mobile and PC space, or that can afford a modern console,  is really short sighted because it cuts you almost entirely out of the markets that are growing the fastest (hint, it aint here in the US).  There are also entire popular genres of game (like the erotic dating sim/ shooter) doing really well I personally have never even heard of, and I am pretty sure are not being developed here.

2. Many peaple enjoy setting piles of money on fire.  A lot of the money that peaple used to spend on games is now getting farted away in various kinds of gambling sites, such as prediction markets, sports betting and straight up internet gambling.  I guess it's the same concept as gacha games, just with the game in the middle cut out . . .

3. Invest in Roblox! 

Edit: But not right now!

https://www.marketbeat.com/instant-alerts/filing-national-pension-service-sells-791197-shares-of-roblox-corporation-rblx-2026-05-31/

Also, I promise I will be posting about MMOs again at some point :-)

*No actually, I had heard of him through Wilhem.  For example, a recent post here.  However, while I have looked at the slides he has posted from his 2025 presentation with interest, I never apparently even considered filing the name of the person that made the slides anywhere!

Project Genie: Make your own world with a prompt?

Via slashdot, this is the first time I have heard of Google's project Genie.  Apparently it will let you create an interactive world with a series of prompts.  Stocks of AAA video game companies are dipping based on the news. However, it's clearly just a tech demo at this point.

I watched some video demos, and it certainly looks interesting.  You enter a text prompt to create a world, and then another one for the character you wish to create. There is a check box for first or third person camera view, and then you get to explore the world using either arrow keys or classic WASD controls. You can also refine the world as you go.  The whole video honestly gave me slight Star Trek Holodeck vibes. 

It's certainly not seemingly up to the task of making a full featured game right now.  For one thing, as far as I can tell there is no way to do more than walk around the environments, for the most part.  One demo does show someone painting a wall.  But the limits of object interaction are really unclear, and I doubt you can (for example) set up rules for some kind of character advancement or combat.  Give it a year or two, and the ability to save and distribute links to the worlds you generate, and yeah it might be in the running for letting plebs like me design games without having to learn a 3D engine or the like.

I would love to play around with it, but right now it's locked behind a Google AI Ultra plan, which has currently been "generously" discounted to only $124 per month.  I don't get enough value out of any AI platform I have played around with to want to pony up even $15 a month, much less more than I generaly spend on some utilities.  Still, I will be quite interested to see where this goes.  

In a completely unrelated topic, Project Gorgon is finally live, as anyone reading this is almost certainly already aware.  I definitely plan to purchase it over the weekend just to support the peaple behind it.  But I probably won't stick my head in until the second fresh start server goes up.  Apparently they also managed to break peak concurrency of 1000 today.  I really hope the game prospers, I have been rooting for them for a while.