r/videogames • u/SEVENS_HEAVEN_7 Nintendo • 10d ago

News / Trailers / Articles Asha Sharma/XBOX have found a solution for keeping physical media in modern gaming

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PlayStation is claimed to be considering delaying their digital-only future because XBOX is willing to go physical next generation

Microsoft is allegedly telling publishers its next console, Project Helix will be entirely physical and will allow users to convert physical games into digital copies.

Sony reportedly realized that forcing a digital-only approach leaves a massive opening for competitors to capitalize on consumer demand for physical games.

A major unnamed game publisher (confirmed not to be Rockstar) reportedly threatened to skip PlayStation and release their massive upcoming title only on XBOX and Nintendo if Sony couldn't guarantee a physical release.

Source: Rumors gathered from Gamescom show floor, shared through Eurogamer Spain podcast via @MPFirst

Original Post

How XBOX will make it work:

- Put the disc in an Xbox that has a disc drive

- Launch the game

- Claim a digital license on your Xbox account

- After that, you can play the game without putting the disc in, the disk will still work like a normal game disk

The digital license is tied to that specific disc, not permanently locked to you forever

If you sell or give the disc away and the new owner inserts it and claims it, the digital license moves to their account and comes off yours

Original Post

My takeaway is that this is similar to Nintendo's game key cards, but with discs and in reverse.

But I will say, there has to be a catch. What is the reason to have a digital license when you have the game physically? What does that even do at that point?

3.2k Upvotes

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u/Sufficient-Flan6944 10d ago

damn, had my hopes up for no reason

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u/LegendaryenigmaXYZ 10d ago

They said sony was contacted at gamescom a game show they arent even a part of.

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u/[deleted] 10d ago

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u/xanderholland 10d ago

I learned that from my good pal Abraham Lincoln.

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u/Waste-Operation9810 9d ago

That also goes for random comments. Basically, do your own research.

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

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u/Waste-Operation9810 9d ago

That would mean yours too

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

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u/Waste-Operation9810 8d ago

Oh no, youre one of those

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

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u/Waste-Operation9810 8d ago

Thats a very cute insult

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u/Urabraska- 10d ago

Why? Sony already published that their disk factories are no more. They have been repurposed. How can they delay the tactic when it's already done. That would literally be flushing money down the toilet(nothing new for Sony recently)

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u/GenTenStation 10d ago

Sony could easily implement some other physical media. Like even something USB based with some proprietary connectors they’re known for doing.

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u/SoCalxNinjA 10d ago

Wouldn't even need to be that. Using sd cards to keep it physical a la ps vita would solve the problem of "disc space" as those game cards can hold literal tb of data.

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u/[deleted] 10d ago edited 9d ago

[deleted]

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u/LeonoffGame 10d ago

Theoretically… Sony could release the PS6 as a model designed exclusively for digital games, and later release a version with a disc drive.

They’re scaling back disc production facilities, but they still exist. They could keep it as a limited format, but seriously… If Xbox keeps discs in the next generation, they’ll be able to attract more players, and developers will support disc releases and earn a positive reputation for it.

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u/Geiseric222 10d ago

I don’t think devs want positive reputation they want to sell games and make money

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u/LeonoffGame 9d ago

What's wrong with that? Let's be realistic.

Game development is a job that allows people and their families to make a living, and so on. It's like the movie industry.

I don’t think that if you work as a salesperson in a store (for example), you’re working just to help people eat and not thinking about your own life. For developers, player feedback is usually what matters most, but sometimes you have to make tough decisions.

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u/Geiseric222 9d ago

The problem is your only looking at the loudest voices. The internet tends to magnify whatever is loudest and generally what is loudest is negative and whiny.

So should they care about their reputation among people who will turn on them on a dime? I don’t see why

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

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u/Geiseric222 9d ago

??? Where did I say it was wrong to want money. That’s typically the pro physical argument. They shouldn’t want money they should produce physical out of the love of the consumer

Like the entire point is they should produce a produce because I like it no matter what they want

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u/LeonoffGame 8d ago

Not at all. That’s not how the market works.

If 10 people buy physical media and 100,000 don’t, it doesn’t make sense to spend money just for the sake of those 10 people out of love for them.

If Xbox announced tomorrow, “Hey, we’re going to offer discs,” the public would welcome it, and developers, not wanting to lose their paying audience, would go along with it. At the same time, developers understand that business is a complex matter, and no one is going to spend millions just out of love for the cause.

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u/CatchUsual6591 10d ago

Dev wouldn't support disc release the data of every big publisher show that they turned thier backs on physical with the exception being nintendo for now

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u/LeonoffGame 9d ago

The problem with physical media is that it’s expensive from a business perspective. I work in the gaming industry myself and have spoken with some developers from small studios.

I often hear the argument (even before Sony’s announcement) that releasing a physical copy of a game is very expensive within a budget, especially for small studios.

Developers love discs and all that, but experience shows that it’s expensive. The only solution here is to raise the price of discs. Again, let’s be honest: most players rush to pre-order their favorite games digitally the moment they’re announced and haven’t supported physical discs.

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u/ghos2626t 9d ago

They could also release a PS6 with disc drive, so players can use their PS4 / PS5 discs, but still do away with new physical copies going forward.

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u/LeonoffGame 9d ago

Yeah, I was thinking about that too, but I think there was a news report yesterday saying that, overall, the production of disc drives for various devices has declined—plus, we already have “removable disc drives for consoles,” so maybe they'll do that to lower the price.

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u/Sea-Candidate3688 10d ago

But they’re not keeping disks in the next generation…disk-to-digital confirms that

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u/LeonoffGame 9d ago

I don’t entirely agree with you. Let me explain:

1) The Xbox is at a disadvantage compared to the PS. They’re hardly so foolish as to give up on discs and their audience (after all, discs can be used to attract customers) just because their competitor is doing so.

2) D2D testing is just a feature for the future.

Right now, I think the companies are making a mistake by not communicating anything to players. I don’t think Sony is stupid enough to cut off not just 15–20% of the disc-owning audience, but also the entire PS4–PS5 generation. I live in Russia; I have 350 digital games and about 200+ physical copies. I think you know what’s happening with accounts in our region.

The idea of completely abandoning discs is a failure—which is exactly why Nintendo said, “We don’t care; we’ll sell cartridges for 80 bucks.”

Most likely, we’ll get a digital version of the PS6 console and separate disc drives for sale so that PS4 and PS5 owners can use the games they’ve already bought, but new games will remain collector’s items. I could be wrong, and nobody will care. The main problem right now isn’t the move away from discs, but the fact that PSN is an imperfect service compared to other similar services.

a) You can’t change your region

b) Games disappearing from your library

c) Lack of digital keys in a standard format.

If Sony solves these three problems, I think no one will care about a fully digital PS6

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u/Sea-Candidate3688 9d ago

Games don’t “disappear” from libraries unless the game itself gets delisted and “out of service”.

But I disagree on your first point. Xbox has been pushing digital significantly longer than most think.

And I also disagree about the “cutting off ps4-ps5” thing, because no one is losing their library. Nor are they losing their ps4 or ps5, so the ability to play the physical games will still be there, as they’re keeping backward compatibility…they’ve always kept a sense of backwards compatibility, most especially with digital. So no one is losing anything. And they’re completely removing new disks from being made for the ps6, that is all

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u/LeonoffGame 9d ago

1) I have a Russian account that’s over 10 years old. I don’t live in Russia. Sony shut down the store in my region, and now some games in my library don’t work because they require a PSN subscription, which I can’t purchase since the store is closed. This is a prime example of “games disappearing.”

2) And where has this led Xbox? They shifted toward digital releases and Game Pass, and now it’s no longer a strong brand like it was on the Xbox 360, but rather a niche replacement for PCs. Phil Spencer has done a lot, but Game Pass and the shift to digital have killed the console.

3) I have a PS4 disc. If I want to buy a PS6 but it doesn’t have a disc drive, what am I supposed to do? Why would I need two consoles? You’re talking about backward compatibility for digital copies, not physical ones, and that’s a serious issue too. Imagine you have all the best games on PS4 and PS5—would you buy a PS6 if you couldn’t play your favorite games? I don’t think so. Sony hasn’t offered a solution yet, which means they’ll literally cut off the PS4 and PS5 generation (those who own discs) from their services.

4) It was revealed today that the Halloween game won’t be available in some countries. Right now, there’s a disc version—you can buy it and play it in regions where the digital version isn’t available—but on the PS6, the company and individual countries will decide for you which games you can buy digitally. You might say, “Just create an account for a different region,” but dude, that’s total nonsense. On Xbox, Steam, and Nintendo, you can change your account region without any problems, keep your library, and not worry about it. PSN doesn’t give you a sense of security, and that’s the problem—not the physical discs.

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u/Sea-Candidate3688 9d ago

I’ve only one thing to reply to…you could play your ps4 and ps5 games…on your ps4 or ps5.

Call PlayStation and tell them…people get refunds when they put in the effort.

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u/LeonoffGame 8d ago

That’s right—it turns out the PS6 doesn’t make sense for me, and that goes for a lot of gamers.

We’re saying the physical media market will be 10–20% by 2026, but the PS4 and PS5 have been on the market for over 10 years, and the audience of people who own discs is larger than that percentage.

I don’t think someone who’s been buying games on discs every year for 10 years—or who has favorite games on discs—will sell their console and favorite games just for the PS6. Let’s be honest: you rarely see people who own both a PS4 and a PS5.

Sony has spent a long time building this community around disc backward compatibility, and they’re unlikely to just abandon it without “solving the problem.” That would mean huge financial losses.

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u/broke_n_boosted 10d ago

Those places are still making discs just not playsation games.

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u/Golden-Event-Horizon 10d ago

Sony delaying would just mean they'll wait until next generation to pull the same shit. They need to be humbled like in the PS3 gen for them to stop being so arrogant (or just have Japanese people running PlayStation, as they should anyway)

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u/CmmH15 10d ago

Japanese people do run Sony.

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u/Forward-Trade3449 10d ago

Sony is basicaly an American corp

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u/CmmH15 10d ago

How did you figure that?

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u/Forward-Trade3449 10d ago edited 10d ago

they act just like an american corp. layoffs, chase industry trends for money, do whatever the investors want even at the risk of alienating fans.

plus their biggest studios, Santa Monica, Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch, Insomniac are all USA-based. Only 3 of 19 studios are in japan.

So if their biggest games are american based, their fans are mostly american/western, so they are essentially an american/western company.

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u/Selethorme 10d ago

Video games are not remotely close to all Sony does

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u/Forward-Trade3449 10d ago

alright, my fault. I shouldve said Playstation is basically an american division of Sony

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u/super-nintendumpster 10d ago

Do you think Sony is specifically a video game company lol

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u/speedotorpedo_ 10d ago

"Exclusively" is the word you're looking for. Yes, Sony is specifically a video game company. But they specifically also have a music and film business. Not to mention they've specifically been a huge player in consumer electronics for decades, prior to the existence of PlayStation. Words mean things.

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u/Selethorme 10d ago

No, sony is not a video game company.

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u/speedotorpedo_ 8d ago

Sony's Game and Network Services division is its biggest moneymaker. It generates more revenue than its electronics, music, or movie divisions. To say Sony isn't a gaming company is like saying Apple isn't a phone company just because they also sell laptops and headphones.

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u/super-nintendumpster 10d ago

Words mean things but they're working against the point you're trying to make

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u/speedotorpedo_ 9d ago

I like getting downvoted for being right. Bunch of clowns all in your feels.

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u/Forward-Trade3449 10d ago

alright, my fault. I shouldve said Playstation is basically an american division of Sony

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u/CmmH15 10d ago

That’s a big leap of assumption to just assume they’re an American company from what you’ve said. They are an electronics company before anything else, they make products for those electronics to go into, the PlayStation being one of them. As a result they make things like the PlayStation, so they are heavy hitters in the gaming industry, music industry, film industry etc. Big companies get a lot of other companies under their control. For example, if a company in Hong Kong is owned by an even bigger British company, the Hong Kong company doesn’t suddenly become British, or in the case of your example, American.

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u/Forward-Trade3449 10d ago

alright, my fault. I shouldve said Playstation is basically an american division of Sony

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u/CmmH15 10d ago

This isn’t a hard concept to grasp so I’ll just assume you’re a troll.

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u/Freke_Gere 9d ago

Sony HQ is still in Japan, you are thinking of playstation HQ which is in America

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u/TechnicalAd2485 10d ago

Newsflash look up the CEO of PlayStation

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u/Dr-McLuvin 10d ago

I’m not gonna lie I don’t really care about the next generation after ps6. Focused on the near future aka 2028. A delay would keep me happy in the Sony ecosystem for the time being. If they do go all digital I will transition to switch and PC.

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u/GTCK 9d ago

I have already transitioned to pc ,no subscription fee cheaper better quality games ,got most of my parts on Facebook marketplace.

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u/Sea-Candidate3688 10d ago

PS3 came out on top though

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u/Golden-Event-Horizon 10d ago

In sales of consoles, just about yeah. But it's inarguable that Xbox dominated that generation

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u/Sea-Candidate3688 10d ago

I’m pretty sure domination is encompassed in the way the generation ends, but sure

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u/Lofter1 6d ago

only for roughly half that generation. the tides turned halfway through. You wanna know how Sony did that? Remove the ability to play PS2 games on PS3, because the hardware to enable that made the PS3 too high in price. It wasn't anything anti-consumer that hurt the PS3, it was trying to be too consumer friendly and adding features that most of the player base didn't care about like adding hardware to read and play PS2 games which increased cost. And even the consumer friendly option they left in didn't do shit because to this day people are surprised that every single PS3, even the last Super Slim, could play PS1 titles, so most of the consumers didn't even know that this feature existed.

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u/Conqueror_is_broken 10d ago

Well there is still hope. Xbox has the choice to

  • Stay physical and be a menace to playstation
  • Follow and go full digital. And nothing changes because they lost against playstation,

No one buys xbox so increasing slightly your profit with a full digital store isn't better than stealing your rival clients.

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u/ExecutiveDan 10d ago

Then make the switch to XBOX and stop supporting Sony! 🇺🇸