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Sony Abandons Social Media for 24 Hours+ After Controversially Killing Physical Games
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this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2026
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Their competition (Nintendo and Steam) already don't have physical media. Nintendo is moving towards 100% Game Key cards, and Steam is all downloads. Playstation could have used physical media as a competitive advantage, but decided against it for cost reasons. So now this is the end of gaming physical media. The game sizes are just way too large.
the cost to produce and distribute (or rather, the lower profits), was secondary.. waaaay tf under the top 5 reasons for dumping physical media: control, control, control. control, and control... control over your "purchases"
Just to be fair, the Nintendo Switch 2 does support "Game Key Card" games. Such that you still must download the game and use the card to authenticate your game.
However there are zero first party* Nintendo games that are "Game Key Card" games. If you buy Mario or Zelda you do get the game on the card.
I do expect that will change in the future and follow the trend Sony is taking to be 100% digital. So you're right to be concerned that they are heading in the same direction.in fact with Sony already heading that direction it's even more certain.
*(Pokemon, which feels like a first party and Nintendo owns a large portion of, is technically third party.)
Sorta annoyed Nintendo didn't receive as much flak as this with hoards of people trying to justify game cards by pointing at Microsoft and Sony.
Nintendo is beyond the event horizon at this point.
And that’s alright. Like, if you can afford a Switch and you get it so your family can play Pokopia and Animal Crossing, all their nonsense doesn’t really matter to your lifestyle.
…But if it does matter, “Nintendo Fans” are in waaay too deep to plausibly defend them anyway.
I had no idea "game key cards" were a thing until this comment sent me down a rabbit hole. What a total scam! Clearly deceptive and anti-consumer. I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action lawsuit yet. Maybe most are ignorant like myself.
How is it a scam? It is exactlly what is printed on the box. Not everything you dislike is a scam.
You know. Store agnostic game key cards would be so cool.
I’m fine with archiving downloads I’d want + keeping keycards.
Dual layer Blu-Ray is 100GB, old PS1 games used to ship on many disks (looking at you FF7 and FF8).
Single layer 25GB, Dual 50GB, Tri 100GB, Quad 128GB.
Oh, thank you! :)
And CoD is 250GB or something.
Holy crap really? That's freakin comically huge
How much would 2-3 dual-later BDs cost?
The issue isn’t the technical possibility, but whether people are willing to pay the premium for installation media.
Of course I would pay an extra few dollars tohave media and guarantee a game will install and run even if the internet goes away.
This isn't about convienence for the users, its about killing the secondary market
To the manufacturer? Pennies. It’s made of the same stuff DVDs are. They’re only expensive to the consumer because the entire industry hates the idea of them.