{"id":1109,"date":"2026-07-06T04:55:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T04:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.drivingnowhere.com\/?p=1109"},"modified":"2026-07-06T10:36:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T10:36:00","slug":"rip-physical-media-and-i-guess-im-a-cat-lady-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drivingnowhere.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/06\/rip-physical-media-and-i-guess-im-a-cat-lady-now\/","title":{"rendered":"RIP physical media and I guess I’m a cat lady now"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

So I guess I should give my opinion on the shenanigans Sony is doing with ending physical media production in 2028<\/a>, wiping hundreds of purchased movies from users<\/a>, and ending the PS3\/Vita store<\/a>. First I’ll say the timing of all of it is hilarious, like they already planned to do these things in advance and decided to do all of them at once to sorta “rip off the band aid” of outrage. I guess we’ll see if any further bad news materializes (I expect further price increases…) in the near future, but the tiny glimmer of hope I have is this is all of it. They got all the horribleness out at once, so we can at least lick our wounds for a bit before more awfulness occurs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ANYWAY! The PS3\/Vita digital stores ending is a bit sad, but expected. They tried five years ago and enough people were outraged that they backtracked on that decision. While a victory at the time for consumers, Sony sorta made clear what their intentions were, so it was only a matter of time before they followed through. It’s clear they decided to do this alongside even worse news so that folks wouldn’t spend energy fighting against this. They were right, as all of the attention and outrage is focused on their decision to end physical media production in 2028.

Their decision to end physical media production is something that seemed inevitable, but it was always at some vague point in the future. Once Microsoft and Sony started experimenting with digital only systems even as far back as the PSP Go and the Xbox All Digital Edition, and expanded their online stores and digital content… it became clear what the end goal was.

I’m a physical collector and adore my games<\/a>, but I always saw the writing on the wall. I hoped they’d at least wait until the end of the PS6 generation before going all in on digital, but this is just happening sooner than I expected. Damn. I’ve had plenty of time to think about how I’m going to navigate this new era that I viewed as inevitable, so I’m not as shocked as some folks on the internet have been. They’ve telegraphed this for years and were just waiting for the moment they could pull it off.

I’ll be nearing 40 years old when this happens in 2028, and after a bit of self reflection I realized I’m not that obsessed about new game releases anymore. I look forward to a title here and there, but the urge to get new games isn’t nearly what it was when I was younger. I have a decent collection now that makes me happy and I will happily add older games to it. I have no desire to grow my collection beyond the PS5 generation though, so this feels a bit short sighted by Sony in my opinion if they want old folks disposable income… and I ain’t gifting PSN codes to younger ones. Long story short: I won’t be spending nearly as much money in the future on new games. I’ll continue to curate my old stuff, but I have no desire to anchor my finances to the whims of Sony or Microsoft. Especially with how expensive components are these days! The raw components alone for the PS6 are expected to be a grand… Steam Machine is crazy expensive, but that is just a clue of how expensive next generation systems are going to be now. It’s not an exception, it’s just a preview of what will be the new normal.



I was thinking about how they’ll do the PS6 and “Project Helix” with the current economic realities and I do<\/em> have a prediction on this. We’ll see if I’m right:

Basically the phone contract model is going to be used for videogame consoles. I am pretty certain this will become the norm, Xbox already has the \u2018buy now pay later\u2019 option, it\u2019s just a matter of time before Sony does this as well and when the next generation hardware comes along they\u2019ll really push this as the primary option\u2026 I do have an additional prediction that may or may not happen, but this may be the end of console \u2018generations\u2019 entirely. Think Android and iOS, the hardware will get updated every couple years and have the \u2018baseline\u2019 of PS5 and XSX initially to initially keep the playerbase. With the systems being basically gaming PC\u2019s optimizations will be similar to PC gaming with scaling between systems, and having the latest and greatest isn\u2019t 100%\u00a0 necessary for most. Like with phones folks will just upgrade depending on where they are with their contract and if they feel like it.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question I\u2019d have is what Nintendo is going to do in this current landscape<\/em>. Like, they\u2019re selling a ton now… but I\u2019m curious what their plans will be in a couple years. They might have their hands forced into releasing a budget screenless Switch 2 as they\u2019ve kind of built themselves up as the family friendly budget option. Historically an extremely lucrative market, but looking ahead I’m not so confident that’ll continue to be the case. Families aren\u2019t going to like the idea of financing a console for their kids and they really need to stay under the $499 mark regardless of inflation and component costs.




IN OTHER NEWS<\/strong>

I drew a nuther cat comic. Swear this is the last one. Maybe.

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

-K<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I guess I should give my opinion on the shenanigans Sony is doing with ending physical media production in 2028, wiping hundreds of purchased movies from users, and ending the PS3\/Vita store. First I’ll say the timing of all
Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drivingnowhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drivingnowhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drivingnowhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drivingnowhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drivingnowhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1109"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.drivingnowhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1127,"href":"https:\/\/www.drivingnowhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109\/revisions\/1127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drivingnowhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drivingnowhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drivingnowhere.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}