No Choice, Then Choice, Then No Choice Again: Sony Ending Physical Games

01 Jul, 2026

This morning, Sony announced that they'll stop making new physical videogames as of 2028. While I can't say I'm shocked, it's definitely going to affect some players.

I care less about the person who wants pristine plastic on their shelves.¹ I care more about the 14-year old kid who lives in rural New Mexico and the only way to download a videogame is to have their parents drive them 90 minutes to the nearest GameStop so they can use their internet access. I don't think that people in suits in high-rise buildings fully understand that a decent portion of the USA still doesn't have incredible network speeds, and with the frequency of patches going up, along with the size of those patches, keeping up seems daunting.²

But the kids I feel bad for are the ones who won't ever get to:

• Hit Walmart's $5 budget bin and thumb around for some cheap winners.
• Look at the back of boxes on game shelves, see the shots, read the flavor text, see how many blocks it'll take up on your VMU.
• Let a friend borrow a game.

October 29, 2002 was a Tuesday, and I remember this because it was Grand Theft Auto: Vice City release day, and I had to work. Back then, the rules of release were a bit fluid, I don't think you could break the street date, but midnight launches could happen.

Our local Electronics Boutique was aware of how important this game was, but they didn't have the actual games yet. However the games shipped to stores then, either from a warehouse or from Rockstar themselves, our store in Taunton, MA was at the mercy of UPS, and whenever they picked up the Next Day Air box full of Vice City, and decided to get it to the store. Store management had a concern that if the games weren't there for the 10:00am store opening, there may be a riot, especially with many people having preorders.

My friend Ted and I visited the night before and spoke to the manager about the "big day tomorrow," and since we had a cordial relationship with him, he let slip that he was planning to head to Rhode Island T. F. Green International Airport in Providence very early to intercept the package at the UPS terminal, and sign for it there, to skip the whole process of it sitting on a UPS truck for 8 hours. He said he'd open the store at 6:00am if he indeed got the games.

The manager grabbed it at about 4:00am, broke it up a bit to fit in his tiny Ford Escort, and drove the 35 minutes back to the store. Ted and I walked in at about 6:30am for our copies, and what was usually a display case behind the counter, housing a variety of PlayStation 2 and Xbox games, just showing their spines, was a grid of copies of Vice City, about 15x6 in a big rectangle, all front-facing.

We got the first two copies from this store, and left, because I had to go to work, but Ted had just got out of work, and had all day to play, while I worked.

I had the game under the driver's seat of my 2001 Corolla, I checked in on it a couple times in the morning, even though I wasn't supposed to leave my desk. During my lunch break, I ate quickly and decided to open the game up. I checked out the manual, the paper smelling like cardboard. I looked at the poster-sized map, which promised hundreds of hours of imminent fun. I held the DVD up to the sunlight, to see the rainbow reflection on an untouched disc.

When I got home, I played.

This sort of story will be highly irregular, fading into the realm of "hey remember when?" I realize that in 2002, there was effectively no network infrastructure for sharing digital videogames on such a large scale. Hell, Steam was still a year away. We had no choice, and then for many years, we had choices. Now, at least on PlayStation, kids will go back to having no choice. But, will they even care?