The death of physical media is having the opposite effect on me – I've fallen back in love with my disc drive in 2026

When Sony announced its plan to discontinue physical games by January 2028, players responded by orchestrating a week-long boycott. Meanwhile, I went out and bought a PS5 disc drive.

Boycotts can and do work, but this one felt futile. An analyst confirmed that the boycott made "no significant change at all" in PSN's player count numbers over the course of the blackout. In fact, Sony's stock price mostly trended upward during the period.

Players' hearts were in the right place, but it's time to accept that we're going to see the end of physical games for PlayStation. But as I move toward acceptance myself, I've decided to return to my hard copy roots in 2026 to see what I've been missing.

PlayStation killing discs is bad for everyone, whether you care about physical games or not

When we were kids, my brother and I would visit GameStop together. We had no particular games in mind that we wanted to pick up, but the promise of finding something new always drew us back. We almost exclusively played used games, emblazoned with the pre-owned GameStop price sticker. Every game we had was on a disc or cartridge, kept in well-loved cases that were popped open and clicked close so often that I could still recognize the sound from a mile away.

I grew up in the GameCube era, with physical memory cartridges you could swap out, CD-ROMs to play on the family computer, and VHS tapes that required you to be on channel three to watch. I have the majority of The Sims 3 expansions in a box with no disc drive to ever return to, original Xbox games that are no longer backwards compatible with the current generation, and a handful of Xbox One games collecting dust on a shelf. Physical media is in my DNA, but somewhere along the way, I traded it in for the convenience of digital gaming.

Nowadays, the majority of my gaming library is on Steam, and until recently, I hadn't purchased a single physical game for this current generation. I bought a PS5 Pro right after the God of War Laufey announcement; I have no intention of missing out on the next God of War instalment now that PlayStation will stop porting PS5 exclusives to PC, and was more than ready to retire my near-obsolete Xbox Series X (the big boy simply can't fit in my room alongside the PS5).

It wasn't until I was in the car, PS5 Pro buckled into the passenger seat, that I was informed of one crucial detail. My friend asked me if I had also bought a PS5 disc drive, to which I responded similarly to Jennifer Lawrence in her infamous Hot Ones meme: "What do you mean?"

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