PlayStation Empire Begins to Fall
Christopher Ulinfun, section editor
Marked-up prices, no physical disks and mediocre games. For the past year and a half, Sony has somehow managed to do all of this and more despite constant backlash from fans and a drop in sales and shows no sign of stopping.
Perhaps one of the most controversial decisions possibly made, Sony’s removal of physical disk imports and all future physical games starting Jan. 2028, has sparked major backlash from players.
“I think the removal of physical disks takes away the feeling of owning the game. Without having a physical copy, your game can always be taken away from you.” Says senior Hunor Koletity.
The idea of purchasing and owning games loses all value with this decision. The CNBC news program states this reason to “enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today.”
The consequence of this, however, is that players don’t own their games anymore, meaning games can be taken away from you at any time for any reason. This also removes the ability to resell, trade, buy second hand or lend to friends, also as making games fully dependent on the PlayStation Network servers as if those go down (which has happened multiple times) you’re unable to play all digital games.
More modern games released in the year have had a noticeable markup in price compared to previous years. In 2022 to late 2024, the prices of base games ranged from $40-$60, with deluxe and ultimate prices being roughly $10 more; but as seen with 2026 games such as the LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight and Echoes of Aincrad, it’s based price has increased to $70 with little to no reason besides “Inflation” and “to cover massive production budgets,” as they’ve stated before in multiple interviews and articles from Comic Book, which led players to notice the hypocrisy in removing physical disk drives and games to cover prices for newer games yet still raising prices.
With the PlayStation exclusive Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA VI) releasing on Nov. 19 of this year, one of the most anticipated games of the decade, players have noticed an even larger price increase of $80 for the standard game and 100$ for the deluxe copy; online speculation believes the impending success of GTA VI will allow PlayStation to increase their prices once again.
With newer games becoming more expensive and harder to own, you’d think these games would at least be spectacular; however, that doesn’t appear to be the case. Reviews for PlayStation’s triple-A game, Marvel’s Wolverine (a game that costs $70), show average to mediocre performances and overwhelmingly negative reviews, with players calling the game “too hand-holdy,” and with PlayStation’s strict return policies, it leaves many unable to receive their money back, as they believe the game “just wasn’t what they expected.”
PlayStation has made a lot of rather questionable choices for how they want to continue marketing their consoles and games, none of which satisfy their fanbase; we’re left to wonder what their end goal really is, or even if they have one outside of making as much money with as little effort as possible.
