Playstation NO DISC/NO BUY Fight Is Over...

[00:00:00]Look, man. I know I would have one of the biggest gaming channels on YouTube if I just told you what you wanted to hear. I know what you want to hear. I do. If I just sat here and catered to your nostalgia, our nostalgia, frankly, and fed the outrage machine, my sub count would explode overnight. I I could do I could do it right now. But, here's the truth, the actual uncomfortable truth that very few people in this space seem to want to admit. And the truth is phasing out physical media is not some evil greedy Rothschild coded Illuminati stuffed anti-consumer plot to ruin your life. It really isn't. It is just the brutal unavoidable financial reality of an industry trying to survive when the kind of games that made you love PlayStation in the first place, well, those games now cost $300 million plus.

[00:00:52]And I want to emphasize the plus, as that's a conservative estimate. $300 million to make games today. Now, look, some of you guys just you don't have your facts straight, and I don't want to pour cold water on your your no disc no buy movement, but I'm going to have to.

[00:01:06]So, I saw this post going around on Twitter today. Perfectly captures why the internet gets so confused about the business of games. It's a post from Rhino, who I follow and I like, but this post I don't like this post so much cuz I mean, look at these check marks. Tens of thousands of views, hundreds of retweets, and people treating it like gospel in the replies. And honestly, I get why. Like, psychologically, I get why. If you don't actually know how the business works, this seems like a completely logical pushback that Rhino's making.

[00:01:38]He's throwing out these stats. Sony shipped 70 million physical discs. The UK physical market is over 300 million pounds in value. 121 countries don't have reliable internet. Jeez, how you going to argue with those stats? But, when you actually pull it apart, the logic, his logic, completely crumbles. All right, let's start with this stat right here. Let's start with the stat that Sony shipped nearly 70 million physical games in fiscal 2025. Well, first of all, shipped does not mean shipped to gamers. It means shipped to retail stores, right?

[00:02:13]So, we don't actually know how many of those 70 million discs made it into players' hands because Sony only has to report what they shipped to stores, not what stores actually sell. When a publisher uh ships a million copies of let's say the phenomenal Ghost of Yote, great game, they count that as a win, as they should. That's a lot of copies. But, if half of those games end up sitting on a shelf gathering dust, Best Buy doesn't just eat that loss. They box those games up and send them right back to Sony for a refund. So, 70 million shipped does not mean 70 million players actually went out and bought a physical copy.

[00:02:49]But, even if it did mean that, let's look at that math. And you guys know, if you watch this channel more than 10 minutes, I'm [ __ ] at math. So, I've triple-checked this. But, here's the math. 70 million discs sounds massive, right? But, if you look at that exact same fiscal year, which is Rhino is talking about, 2025, PlayStation actually sold 290 million ask, uh give or take, million full games. So, if 70 million of those games were physical, that means 210 million of those full games, roughly 72%, were bought digitally. 72% were bought digitally. So, when you look at the whole picture, physical is just a fraction, a fraction of the total volume of games sold. And I'd like to point something out here. That 290 million figure of digital sell is not DLC. It's not Fortnite V-bucks, not microtransactions, not PlayStation Plus subscriptions.

[00:03:42]Sony's own financial reporting to their investors, that number is tracked under a strictly legally binding category called full game software unit sales or something like that. It's I forget the acronym. But it counts actual individual full games, period. The DLC is is listed somewhere else. Now, I know some of you guys will bring up the Insomniac leaks from a while back to argue that big single-player games still sell heavily on disc at launch. First off, that data is years old now. It's 6 years old, I think. Uh it's from 2020 or 2022. But since then, I would guess, and I'd only guess, but I imagine you'd agree the gap between digital and physical has only gotten wider. And by the way, when we talk about I feel like an [ __ ] pointing this out, but I'm sorry. When we talk about phasing out the disc drive, who do you think actually makes that call?

[00:04:28]And this is important to keep in mind though, cuz it's not the developers, it's not the artists and coders and directors at Naughty Dog or Santa Monica.

[00:04:36]They're not sitting around a table plotting to steal your plastic boxes.

[00:04:40]They just want to make great games, which and we'll get to this in a second, this decision for Sony to go all in on digital is going to let those artists keep doing that. And that digital decision, again, it's not even coming from PlayStation. It's coming not coming from Herman Hulst or even his boss. This is a decision that's clearly coming from Papa Sony at the very top of the corporate food chain because the math is simply too good to ignore. This is the math. Like I said, I triple-checked this [ __ ] Sony proper makes most of its money off third-party games, not the first-party titles. The first-party titles motivate you to buy the box, and once you have the box, the lion's share of games that get bought and sold and played on PlayStation are made by different publishers. Konami, Activision. Take Activision, for example, with um Call of I don't know what this game is.

[00:05:28]Take Activision with Call of Duty.

[00:05:30]Call of Duty, okay, the new one, whatever. $70 physical game disc of Call of Duty, and imagine it being sold at Target. Target comes in, they sell a copy, they take their cut. Depends on the negotiation, there's a percentage cut Target gets. The factories that print the discs and the trucks that ship those discs to the stores take a cut, whether it's from the back end or an upfront fee.

[00:05:53]And then Sony takes a fee for just letting the game be on PlayStation.

[00:05:56]Everything sold on PlayStation that runs, Sony gets a percentage, which in the case of a game is 10 bucks. The publisher, Activision, keeps what's left. So, 30 to 35 to 40 bucks. Now, that's good. That's been a business model that's worked for a long time, but look what happens when you buy the exact same game, but you buy it digitally on the PlayStation store. Okay? Target is gone. They get cut out. The people who drive the trucks and run the trucking companies and manufacture the disc and the the the the manuals and write the manuals, all that's gone. That's cut out. Not that we ever have manuals anymore, but you know what I mean, the the the art and stuff. And now, Sony gets to take 30% because it's on PSN, because it's on the digital store, instantly, doubling their take from 10 bucks to 21 bucks. The game's publisher, Activision in this case, they keep the rest of the money for every digital copy sold, instead of getting 35 to 40 bucks, they're making 50 bucks for every single digital copy sold of Call of Duty. How if the if the audience is behind this and they're okay with it, and stats show they are, if you were running these companies, you would do the same, and if not, you'd probably be fired for not, you know, upholding your fiduciary responsibility cuz you're just a [ __ ] [ __ ] if if your job is to make money. So, I mean, you can see why third-party publishers are not fighting Sony on this. They're popping champagne, man. You're other than the really small ones, you're not hearing many people [ __ ] Capcom recently reported that over 90% of their game sales are digital.

[00:07:30]EA, 2K, those guys are making hundreds of millions of dollars more on digital than physical. Everybody makes way more money per game sold without worrying about unsold plastic boxes collecting dust in a warehouse, without worrying about giving other middlemen a cut of the percentage. And this claim from Rhino, yeah, I mean, it sucks. It's unfortunate for markets without high-speed internet. But no massive global company is going to keep paying for factories and trucks and warehouses to serve edge cases that only bring in a tiny fraction of their overall profit.

[00:08:04]They go where the money is, man. I mean, do you really think Sony would be doing this if they're like, "Oh, those 121 countries that don't have PSN, why didn't we think about that? We we totally lost their business. Come on."

[00:08:16]They factored it in. It's It's not a drop in the bucket, clearly. Now, all of this leads to a question of, "Okay, well, great, Jeffy. The math checks out, you know, if you're a greedy [ __ ] robber baron, but isn't this anti-consumer?" Anti-consumer. You hear that a lot in this discussion. The reality of the gaming industry, and any industry, really, and I'm sorry to say this, is that it's a business. First and foremost, before everything else, every single decision in a video game has the bottom line baked into it from the start. From what games get greenlit to what live service games get canceled and when.

[00:08:51]Gamers, they throw this phrase around, anti-consumer. You know, anytime a corporation makes a move where they, the gamers, can clearly see the truth that has always been operating behind the scenes. That every move a company makes is always always about making money. From them greenlighting Twisted Metal 3 instead of a game where you were you played this IT guy inside a giant robot, totally true.

[00:09:17]I was there, I saw the demo. Uh but they greenlit Twisted Metal 3. From From that to them killing the disc drive on the PS6, every decision is "Is this going to make us money?" Now, we sit here and we cry about publishers doing these things, ditching disc drives or pushing live service games.

[00:09:35]But there is a massive, almost willful, disconnect between what the core gaming community demands and the cold, hard, financial reality of what it costs to build games in general, let alone the mega expensive single-player games that a lot of you guys say you want. Hell, I want those games a lot of times. But it is, it's the ultimate cognitive dissonance. Gamers expect every major first-party release to be this visually groundbreaking, 30-hour cinematic masterpiece, but then they riot the second a publisher makes a business move to actually fund that standard, which is becoming an impossible standard because look, let me say the number again to be obnoxious about it, and it's a conservative number, $300 plus.

[00:10:17]And that I'm not talking more than that is for GTA 6. I'm talking PlayStation single-player.

[00:10:23]It's conservative. Come on now. A lot of gamers like to act like they're these uniquely targeted victims of corporate greed, but if you look outside games just for 5 seconds, this is the exact same playbook used and ultimately accepted across every major industry. Here's some examples, yeah?

[00:10:39]Adobe. Adobe Photoshop, Premiere. They killed physical disc and forced every creative who uses their services into a monthly subscription. People screamed and bitched, but now software as a service is the universal standard because most people were fine with it.

[00:10:54]Airlines, if you remember, it's been a while, but they used to include, if you remember, checked bags in the price of your ticket. Then they unbundled it.

[00:11:01]They said, "We're going to charge 35 bucks for you to check a bag."

[00:11:05]They made billions, and now charging for carry-on is totally normal. Apple removed the headphone um jack from the iPhone, you remember? And everybody mocked them. I'm going to put no put that until every single Android maker quietly did the same thing to sell you wireless earbuds. I know this because I just bought some. Finally broke down, bought some. They're awesome. Look, corporations will always test the customers' boundaries to see what they can get away with in order to make more cash. If the market keeps telling them they're okay with it. If the market keeps buying it like they've shown they will do with digital games. I'm sorry, but it's true. What it really comes down to is this simple phrase, "Anti-consumer is usually the temporary phase that exists between outrage and the new normal."

[00:11:51]And I don't see this being any different. I'm sorry to say it's true, but physical disc is going away. And not because an evil villain in a boardroom hates you and wants to take your toys away.

[00:12:02]It wants to squash your nostalgia, but because $300 million plus games cannot survive without companies cutting out the middleman to keep more of the cash.

[00:12:12]And because yes, people are greedy. As greedy as you let them get away with being.

[00:12:16]But the majority of gamers have made it clear they're okay. They're all in with an all digital gaming future. But hey, by all means join the no disc no buy movement if that's where you draw your line. Vote with your wallet. I respect that. I really really do, but just don't be surprised when the video game train keeps racing right past you because the vast majority of the market has already decided. They've moved on.

[00:12:41]They've entered their credit card and they've accepted the new normal. And that's where we are and that's where we're headed.

[00:12:48]I do what Look, man, I wish I could lie to you. I really do. I would be super duper rich. Maybe that's the only business that doesn't put money first or the ones I run cuz I suck at it because if I lied here and if I put greed first, I'd be rolling in it. But I can't. I got to be honest with you. And this is This is the truth as I see it.

[00:13:08]Um anyway, good to see you. Thanks for watching this video. I appreciate you being here.

[00:13:13]Check out Retro Game Treasure. You'll see the link below in our Jaffe 10 on your first box you get 10% off. It's great service and it keeps those physical games alive a heck of a lot longer. Be well. Be safe. See you soon.