Weekend Gamer: The Terrible State of Gaming

I’m sure you’ve all heard by now that Sony announced that it will no longer be putting PlayStation games on discs in 2028.

Sony wrote on July 1, 2026:

This is bad news. This means Sony controls all prices, and you know they will raise the game prices. I mean where else are you going to go?

I’m not shock by their move, but I am mad at it, because I know that Xbox and Nintendo will not be far behind. The PC market, sure 99% of games are digital-only on Steam… but occasionally, some games will produce a box version or collector’s edition (due to the nature of the openness of Windows, anyone can produce a physical disc and sells it).

The digital-only future sucks, because Sony has the power to just take away your games, if they choose to. Just look at the news that Sony recently removed 500 movies from their store, due to a licensing agreement. These are movies people paid for, they’re now gone, without any compensation or say in the matter. What Sony is doing is illegal, it is, as if they stole what you previously own.

Sony has also killed off their PS3 and Vita games (via their store). However, the good news is that you can still re-download your previous purchase (unless they changed their minds). The whole thing stinks… and I’m glad I haven’t been a PlayStation fan since the PlayStation 4. I still own about 50 PS4 games on discs, by the way.

When I moved to Jacksonville, I did entertain giving away or selling my discs because I own most of these games on digital and didn’t want the burden of moving the discs to the new home. I couldn’t leave those old games behind, so I took them with me. I’m glad I did take them with me, because these discs represent a time in my life.

The discs I have on hand are my Fallout games, so I took them out to take this photo. As you can see, Fallout 1 and 2 are represented by their unique instruction books. Then you can see that I played Fallout 3 and New Vegas on the PS3. Fallout 4 and ‘76 were purchased for the PS4. Of course, I own all these games on the PC (Steam and GOG), so I do have other ways of accessing these games… but just that photo holds a lot of personal history for me.

To me, if you are going to sell digital-only games, you need to make the games cheaper. One of the reasons why video games were so expensive, was because they came in a very large box, and depending on certain games, you sometime will an instruction book, a disc (or several discs), a cloth map (or paper map), and sometimes quick-guide. There was no internet, the game needs to work from disc. Those were the days.

Some modern games, such as Pillars of Eternity, you can pay more to get the physical copy – such as this Collector’s Edition, which I purchased used. One of the best purchases I’ve ever made. I absolutely love the game… and the best way to represent my love is this box.

That brings up the whole re-selling thing. This means that you lose the right to re-sell your digital games. When we had discs, we could sell back our games to GameStop, and other people can buy cheaper games. In the digital age, I can see that Sony just won’t have any sales – you’re going to be stuck with that $80 price for as long as they want.

Like I said, I abandoned Sony this generation, it looks like I’ll continue the exile for the foreseeable future. If Xbox is smart, they would double-down on the collector/physical disc market.

Anyone keeping up knows that the reality of the current market, that it’s more expensive than ever to be a video gamer. If you haven’t been keeping up, I’ll break down current prices:

The only console that hasn’t raised their prices is the PlayStation, but looking at the trend, of course, they are going to raise it. Currently, the entry digital-only console retails for $599. Expect that to go up at least $50 more. At this rate, the Neo Geo AES, which originally launched in 1991, is actually a bargain at $250.

Why are all the tech raising in prices? It’s a combination of things, but I believe Donald Trump’s tariffs are mostly to blame. I’ve read tariffs were 100%, doubling the prices. These companies are not eating that cost, so the prices have to be raised to reflect the current situation.

The other blame (at least according to the official narrative) goes to AI Datacenter which bought up all the RAM and memory, causing shortage in the memory market. I hope the Datacenter problem is a temporarily discomfortable, and the tariff problem will hopefully go away when they impeach or Trump is no longer in charge. What a disaster it’s been for gamers in America. By the way, these very high prices are only in the American market.

What does all this mean? For me, I’m never buying new consoles. Thankfully, I still have tech from a few years ago, so I can still enjoy playing games. I feel bad for the new gamers. They’re probably not going to become future gamers, or if they do, they’re just going to play those phone games/casual free games. The gaming industry needs gamers to keep it going… but with today’s $80 game prices, only a few are playing. From my own experience, I am mainly playing games released 10 years ago or affordable games under $30.

If you look at my gaming history, I never pay full price for new games. I used to be able to play the latest games, via Game Pass, but since they raised their prices to nearly $30, I tapped out and basically lost access to new games. Sure, Xbox lowered the price to $22.99, but it’s too little and too late for me.

Weekend Gamer’s playlist:

Again, the sad thing is that I’ll probably never buy anything new for a while. I have thousands and thousands of old games, and I’m content in waiting for new games to drop in prices or goes on sale (usually one year after they originally release).

Yours,

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