Belatedly asking partners for their views on the discontinuation of physical media suggests that Sony is finally realising how consequential that decision actually is
Image credit: Denise Jans via Unsplash
The news that Sony is surveying its development partners to get their input on its decision to end support for physical game releases (first reported by Moore’s Law is Dead) is a little odd, at least from a sequencing perspective. You’d generally imagine that talking to your most important business partners would be something to be done before making a major public announcement of an enormous change that will impact all of them. Better late than never, I suppose, though exactly how much better remains to be seen.
What this belated consultation hammers home is just how unilateral the decision to end physical game distribution has been. It’s not that it was a particularly surprising decision – it always looked likely that physical media support in the next generation of console hardware would be an afterthought at best. It was, however, a poorly handled one. There were ways to do this that showed more flexibility and encouraged more buy-in from both industry partners and consumers;
