So a few weeks ago I made a post talking about the current state of the game industry. It was mainly talking about how the industry is still trying to chase the high profits that came with the pandemic and how big companies like Microsoft and Sony are making terrible choices in that pursuit. Overall, I was proud of the post! However, it was swiftly made outdated in the coming weeks as the industry continued its spiral downwards and now I feel like I should cover that. So think of this post as sort of a sequel to my recent The State of Console Gaming post from not too long ago!

At the end of my last post, I talked about how Microsoft was seemingly shutting down Ninja Theory and preparing to shut down even more studios as well. Thankfully, that didn’t end up happening even though they and a few other studios Microsoft owned would be shifting away from them. Ninja Theory and Undead Labs, who both have big games in the works for Microsoft, have been sold off to other yet to be named companies while Compulsion Games and Double Fine are going back to being independent studios. Honestly, not terrible news! Sadly that wasn’t the only news.

Along with losing these studios, Microsoft announced a number of sweeping layoffs with their games division being hit the hardest. I’m not going to go over every part that was affected but these were some very deep cuts and made it clear that even if your studio is producing games, even profitable ones, that doesn’t mean you are safe in the slightest.

All of these massive changes are a part of Microsoft’s “reset”. This is their big plan to try and make Xbox profitable again after losing so much from the buy outs and Game Pass. Basically, this is their way of explaining these layoffs and whatnot as a good thing for Xbox overall, which is a pretty hard sell when you see that the people who had made the choices that led to Xbox’s current situation really aren’t being affected all that much. Instead, it’s the developers at the bottom of the ladder that are being hit hardest. You know, the ones that actually make the games you want people to buy and play… However, I will try and look at some of the positives that may come from all this. I doubt they will outweigh all of the massive negatives, but still!

Another big part of this “reset” is putting more of a focus on the bigger IPs that Microsoft has under its belt. IPs like Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Halo, and Gears of War. All of which either have been struggling or just haven’t been seen from in awhile. Halo only just now is releasing a ‘new’ game with that being a remake of the first Halo minus the multiplayer. And while I have yet to play it, fans of the series have been very lukewarm on the game already. Some are upset that we’re getting another remake, some are upset by all the changes, some are upset by the lack of competitive multiplayer, and some are just upset to see the series on PS5. Regardless, Halo hasn’t been doing so hot as a series for awhile. Before this, its last release was Halo Infinite and that was met with some mixed responses. From the multiplayer being handled poorly and forgotten to the campaign being fun but missing some classic features like couch coop. It’s safe to say that fans of the series haven’t been raving about said series for awhile, going so far as to wish for Microsoft to let another studio handle the series going forward. Gears of War is in a similar situation. A lot of its recent entries have just failed to leave an impact and bring players in to play them. While I haven’t heard any of the more recent games have been bad, I also haven’t heard much about them at all! Something that their newest entry, E-Day, is trying to change by having it be a prequel and bringing back fan favorite characters. That being said, at least those series have gotten new games!

Fallout and Elder Scrolls, despite being massive series and big money makers in the past, haven’t really been doing anything besides continuing their live service games. The last Fallout game, not including Fallout 76 which is that live service game, was released all the way back in 2015. Which isn’t as bad as Elder Scrolls who hasn’t had a mainline release since 2011 with Skyrim! These are two massive franchises that have been just coasting along with remasters and TV shows at this point. But that is changing now. Microsoft is seemingly putting their foot down, forcing Bethesda to really get to work on Elder Scrolls VI which has been in development for ages. They’ve also got Obsidian, the developers behind Fallout New Vegas, to get started on a brand new Fallout game. Which is honestly a smart choice with both decisions.

I’m not really someone to cheer for a corporation putting their foot down and forcing developers to work on specific projects, but I can understand Microsoft’s thought process here, especially when it comes to Elder Scrolls VI. Bethesda really has been sitting on that for ages now and all we’ve seen is one teaser. However, this focus on their big franchises is a bit of a double edged sword. While it is going to be nice to see a lot of these series get a necessary shot to the arm, this approach is going to lead to very little creativity.

I spoke about this some in my last post about the game industry, but this profit focused approached to development is going to lead to very safe and very low risk games. Games that are more of what we got in the past and less about new ideas. With developers making games with their lively hoods on the line, we aren’t going to see risks or innovations and I can’t blame them for that! The higher ups want profit, not art. So even if we do see the rushed returns of series like Fallout, don’t expect it to be anything new. Just same old same old…

So that is where Microsoft currently sits, in a blood bath with no new ideas. But how about Sony? Surely they can’t somehow be in even more hot water than Microsoft, right?

Despite all that Microsoft and Xbox have been up to, Sony somehow managed to take the cake when it comes to pissing people off. Let’s start with the fact that Sony had their own round of layoffs! Thankfully not as big as Microsoft’s but layoffs are layoffs and these ones specifically affected Bungie.

We knew this was coming. Not only was the writing on the walls, a lot of the employees in Bungie were well aware of this too. After finishing up making content for Destiny 2 and Marathon sadly not hitting as hard as they want, Sony brought the axe to Bungie in a major way. Most of the Destiny team and some of the Marathon team were laid off in all this. With the remainder of both teams coming together to work on the future of Marathon. This just sucks. Especially as someone who adores Marathon. So many passionate people were let go during this, ones that were the foundation of development. I’m not going to go into great detail on this or the fact that I feel Marathon, and Destiny despite the fact I wasn’t a big fan, deserved better since we’d be here awhile, I just had to bring up how devastating this is even if Sony’s layoffs weren’t as massive as Microsoft’s. So many people out of work for making good games that just couldn’t meet the expectations of the higher ups that just want more money… But somehow, this wouldn’t be the thing that Sony did to truly piss off the game industry.

Not long after all this, Sony made an announcement that rocked the game industry. At the start of 2028, Sony will cease producing discs for their games, going completely digital for their published games going forward. Now in the grand scheme of things, this isn’t completely surprising. It’s pretty well known that publishers make a lot more money from digital sales compared to physical and consoles have been leaning towards a digital future for awhile now especially this generation which introduced consoles without disc drives. Despite that this still feels extremely sudden. Personally I thought physical games would go the way of vinyl becoming more of a luxury purchase for die hard fans but we’re not even getting that. Sony is just cutting off physical media just like that with there being zero options beyond digital and this is a problem for so many reasons.

For one, this completely removes the ability to walk into a GameStop or Best Buy and go to a games aisle to pick up a game. This also means that reselling games is going to be non existent as well which is how a lot of people are able to get games on the cheap. This also leads into the fact that if you can only get these games via PlayStation’s digital store, it means they will effectively control the prices of these games for all time. Which also means that all the money that Sony is saving by not making discs will probably not come to the consumer as we will continue to get games priced for $70+. However, the biggest issue of all of this is the fact that by eliminating physical media we are losing our ability to own our games.

It’s pretty well known but in case it needs clarifying, buying something digitally usually does not mean you own that product, especially when it comes to things like movies and games. You are technically buying a license to use those products rather than actually own them and said license can be revoked for many reasons. Could be that the license holder just doesn’t want to distribute it anymore, they don’t think it’s profitable enough to keep renewing, or many other reasons. We recently saw this with Sony themselves as they just removed a ton of movies people bought after they didn’t want to keep paying for the license to distribute them. This has happened with a number of games too that simply just vanish from digital market places. If you bought them you better keep them downloaded too because sometimes the ability to redownload them can even be locked out to you. Worse than that, all of this digital content could simply vanish if the digital store front you bought them from is taken down, something we have seen multiple times and is going to be happening soon with the PS3 and PSVita online stores. To make matters even worse, recently both Xbox and PlayStation have been hit with outages which has led to both platforms being put offline for a period and showing people that they can’t play their digital games at those times. Really hammering home the point that these platforms really aren’t ready for an all digital future.

Thankfully, people aren’t taking all of this lying down. This announcement has sparked the “No Disc No Buy” movement where, as you can imagine, people won’t be buying any game that isn’t on a disc. Not only that a lot of people have been canceling their PlayStation Plus subscriptions as another way of getting back at Sony. Only just recently has Sony finally spoken up about all this as well. Sadly, the response wasn’t what people were wanting as the corporation basically doubled down on all that they had said before. Showing us that PlayStation is firm in this all digital future.

As someone who very much adores video games, I want to see this art form preserved for the future. Not only that, I want to be able to own the games I spend my money on, something I feel everyone should agree with. I do understand why some people are trying to say this isn’t a big deal pointing out how people mostly buy digital already but I just can’t understand how even these people are okay with the fact that Sony would have the ability to delete their entire library of games just like that.

So, what can we do to stop this? Sony seems pretty hellbent on going through with this, and the fact they are doing this in 2028 implies that the PS6 may be a digital only console. Because of this, I feel like we can’t do much to stop this at the moment. Even if people stopped buying games digitally on the PS5, Sony will probably use the excuse that people are only doing this because they have the option and once that option no longer exists, they will fold and go all digital. As such, I feel the best way to combat this is to simply not get the PS6 when it launches. Having their new console flop for the lack of physical games would not only send the message to Sony but also Xbox who has been rumored to also be going completely digital as well. In the meantime, I do feel like buying games physically is the right move. That or shifting over to buying games on PC or Switch. I understand buying games digitally on PC seems like it wouldn’t help the issue but there are ways to actually own your PC games, mainly through GOG who actually encourage customers to back up their games and even burn them to discs!

An all digital future is not one I want for games. It has been proven time and time again how this is terrible for game preservation. While this isn’t something we’ll be able to stop overnight or with a few angry tweets, and will require people to really vote with their wallets, we still need to try our hardest to avoid this future.

But those are just my thoughts! What are some of yours? Are you planning to buy a PS6? Do you often buy games physically? I’d love to hear your thoughts so don’t be shy!

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