Adieu, PS5
And a hearty fuck you, Sony.
Ever since the big announcement that Sony is going to completely kill physical media on the PS5, I've been feeling a bunch of emotions toward this. None of them good.
Mostly, I thought back to the Xbox One's announcement. Which Sony famously dunked on, hardcore. What's interesting about that announcement, however, is that Microsoft clearly planned around that whole dumb thing they were trying to do with the Xbox One, and said as such: "Publishers, should they allow you to, will let you resell your game licenses/trade in toward another game, digitally."
This is laughable, taken in a vacuum. Publishers hate us. They'd never allow this type of thing, ever. They want to milk everyone for all they're worth.
But in the context of Sony's 2026 announcement, shockingly, that's more than Sony bothered to give us when announcing the end of physical games.
Microsoft at least left us a ladder, even if the use of that ladder was very conditional and unlikely to ever be used. Sony just said "yeah, we're taking this away, and no, we're not going to give you anything in return. Want to lend, or resell your games? Yeah, no."
(They may well do something about this between now and 2028. However, I'd think it a good idea for them to announce this stuff when announcing the end of physical media. Because, you know, that would make sense. Especially considering that everyone's been saying that Sony has had this move planned.)
This had me already incensed. But then I thought back further. To 2010 and 2011. When Sony decided to fuck over every PS3 owner by removing OtherOS because how dare geohot jailbreak the PS3. (Sony's subsequent lawsuit also was incredibly fucked up, and the 2011 PSN outage resulting from this was just more egg on their faces.)
I also thought "man, I left Sony for far less than their 2026 fuckups."
But no. I went deeper. 2020 saw me playing around with consoles again after being exclusively PC for a long time. You want to know why I bought a PS4? I mean, part of it was that my good friend was offering it to me for a really good price. But the other reason? Sony catered to me, the person who really liked narrative-driven single-player games. Horizon. Spider-Man. Uncharted. Ratchet & Clank. God of War.
When Sony brought out the PS5 and I had the opportunity to get one, I did. Because I wanted to enjoy those games in higher fidelity. (Horizon Forbidden West is considered one of the best-looking PS5 games, and for good reason.)
Sony, however, began to waver. They began their ill-fated live-service push, telling all their studios to get crackin' on live service games, because that's where the money is. As someone who only gives a toss about Warframe as far as live service goes, this was incredibly disappointing. But still. I held the faith. I had to see the Horizon trilogy through, right?
Well, no. Horizon got subject to the same bullshit, with two Horizon live service games having been announced to date, one of them by Guerrilla themselves. Unsurprisingly, they both just look...yeah. Hunters' Gathering just looks like Horizon and Fortnite procreated, and I really do feel like it's going to flop as hard as Concord did. Because no one, and I mean no one asked for this.
In between all this, too, there was that thing that Sony showed off that was supposed to only be a tech demo, an implementation of Aloy powered by AI. Which is just incredibly tone deaf when you consider the story of the Horizon games (and how the world of Horizon ended up the way that it did. Really, Sony? Really?)
For a game series that started off with one hell of a narrative, which had the internet yelling "fuck Ted Faro" in unison...this just felt like a goddamned insult.
The final kick in the nads here was this post by Jason Schreier:
At this point, my last fuck for my PS5 fell, hit the floor, and shattered into a million pieces.
After the big physical media announcement (and subsequently, God of War: Laufey being announced in time to ship on discs) I thought I'd at least stick around to see if Horizon 3 would release on disc. I love Horizon dearly, but I am NOT giving Sony another dime in digital sales, and that includes Horizon.
With it being pretty much confirmed that 1. Guerrilla is going all-in on this live-service garbage, and 2. Because of this, Horizon 3 is not going to make the 2028 cutoff and therefore will not release on disc, I no longer have a reason to keep my PS5. I have a digital library on it, yes, and some physical games, but short of Forbidden West...all those games are on PS4, as well. (And in fact, the God of War Ragnarok code that came with my PS5? It also included the PS4 version. So I don't even lose that!)
So. This is it for me. I'm already in talks with someone to sell my PS5, and also getting a PS4 as well. Meaning my Switch 2 is going to be the last remaining somewhat current console I own.
Adios, Sony. Hopefully you get your head out of your ass, but I'm not holding my breath for that day to come.