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NEWS: Sony Ends Physical Disc Production for PlayStation Consoles

This...sucks >.<...I've always hated digital , i still only buy Cds and Blu rays, i very rarely buy digital anything unless its VNS on the PC.

Guess this means the PS6 wont play my blu rays anymore if they dont have a disc slot neither will it be backwards compatible with any Ps4 or Ps5 discs....

Well looks like I'm never buying a sony console ever again. I refuse to buy a console if there are no physical media. I'd hope that this would mean their sales get heavily reduced and they reverse the decision, but unfortunately I don't think general audiences care enough about this for a boycott

The company cites this decision as an adaptation "to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs."

Yet there are also signs of hope. A significant strategic shift by major streamers, paired with the current state of play in the music industry, offers a potential way forward for physical media.

When Netflix launched its streaming business, you could find everything you wanted, from every era of film and TV, available at all times. Everyone else followed that strategy — but now things are changing again.

Warner Bros. Discovery last year began a content purge of its streaming service HBO Max (now just Max), removing thousands of hours of programming. Disney+, Hulu and Paramount+ followed suit, canceling shows and culling old titles. As the cost of content will continue to rise in a post-strike world, even Netflix or Amazon might be tempted to remove titles to save a few bucks.

That strategy shift, as jarring as it is to some creators and consumers, reinforces the value of physical media. It’s a similar state of play with digital downloads, which you might “buy” from Amazon or iTunes, but can be removed from your library at any time. Studios could pull Westworld and Good Burger from Max — but not from your bookshelf.

With titles disappearing from streaming services at a rapid clip, it might be worth opening that DVD or Blu-ray distribution window one more time: Buy it now, before it leaves your subscriptions and doesn’t come back.

Streaming services are being strategic about what sticks around and what leaves their platforms. Major hits such as Max’s “Peacemaker” or Disney’s “The Mandalorian” are unlikely to be pulled from their respective apps.

Meanwhile, underperforming shows and films could be on the chopping block.

“My main takeaway is that nothing is guaranteed to remain on streaming forever. You are paying for a convenient way to watch content, but it is not a replacement for buying a movie or TV show on home video,” Cartelli said.

But as I said in the past, I have a major love-hate with streaming in general whether it's Netflix, Crunchyroll (before they went premium and Sony/Aniplex bought them out), Disney+, Prime Video, HBO Max. The problem is when it comes to 4K UHD is that the detail and the HDR (that applied to Dolby Vision) aren't as sharp or detailed like compare to the Blu-ray/4K UHD BD. My other problems with streaming:

• 3rd party exclusive titles aka any 3rd party titles with Netflix originals, Max Originals, etc... don't stay on those streaming sites for too long, they can be removed from that streaming sites/providers when their expiration date due and the facts that a lot of these 3rd party titles exclusives don't have physical media release. This is my biggest complaint, and Netflix is the biggest culprit of that.
  
  
• 3rd party titles that aren't a streamer provider's exclusives don't stay on there permanently and are subject to removal based on the nearing expiration date. That applies to most of my foreign TV dramas from South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and non-English speaking European dramas. This is what happened to Pili Fantasy: War of Dragons (the creators who made Thunderbolt Fantasy and Wulin Warriors also made this series) when it was on Netflix for a while back in 2019 and then it got removed in 2022. A lot of these titles include foreign-language TV dramas don't have physical home video release in the US, so that makes it harder for me to find access to these great TV dramas/shows from outside of the English-speaking environment.
  
  
• Subscription prices keep increasing like every year!!! I don't need to explain what that is. I also can confirmed that people are cutting back on streaming probably due to that.
  
  
• Password sharing crackdown. I mean when you got people complaining about the increasing subscription prices and leaning on their friend's streaming subscription to alleviate the cost and the password sharing crackdown from Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max. Yeah, this is not helping the customers/consumers.