- Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden says Sony’s decision to scrap physical discs is “pretty dramatic”
- Layden recalls a time when digital sales “were zero percent” because Sony didn’t have a market
- He believes the move will also mean the PS6 won’t have a disc drive
Former PlayStation Worldwide Studios boss Shawn Layden has shared his thoughts on Sony’s decision to stop producing physical discs and its plan to move fully digital, calling it “a pretty dramatic decision.”
In an interview with Eurogamer following the bombshell news, the 32-year PlayStation veteran confirmed that he had “no idea it was going to happen and “doesn’t necessarily agree with it.”
As for why he thinks Sony made the decision, he suggested, “Maybe it’s just too prohibitively expensive to stamp discs,” but believes that any big move to discontinue a product, feature or model is “pretty much” a “straight sheet.” [decision].”
“What are disc sales compared to digital sales? And I’m old enough to remember when digital sales were 10 percent — I’m old enough to remember when digital sales were zero percent because we didn’t have a digital market! And that number just grew over time,” Layden said.
The former PlayStation executive suggested that the COVID pandemic played a role in accelerating the purchase and consumption of digital games over physical ones, and believes that Sony’s decision could mean that the PS6 does not have a disc drive.
Analysts have also determined that the next-generation PS6 console will launch in late 2028 and will not have a disc drive, or at least one will be sold separately “to play older PS4 and PS5 games on disc.”
In fact, Layden revealed that ditching the PlayStation’s disc drive was something the company considered for a year while he was working there.
“I’ve been asked this question every year for the last 20 years. ‘When are you going to give up on the disk drive?’ My feeling with that was always, Well, when I get to a place where I’m comfortable enough to think that the broadband throughput worldwide is good enough to support that download experience, good enough to reach the majority of customers,” Layden said.
He clarified: “Majority doesn’t mean totality, so there’s a point, a tipping point, where if I have 80 percent of the opportunity, which represents 95 percent of the revenue stream, what’s my incentive to keep the lights on for the other 20 percent, if it’s actually only 5 percent of the business? You see what I’m saying, it could just be a very small thing, because at some point we can just keep this very small? part of the opportunity.”
While Layden admits that Sony had always been “pretty good” at determining the risk of overestimating regional Internet infrastructure, “because unlike Xbox, PlayStation had a wider global fan base, and not just in numbers, but in reach, because Sony Corp had reached all over the world,” there are also gamers who don’t have access to the Internet, such as people on military bases.
“The idea that they could still buy a PlayStation 4 game, throw it in a machine and play was important. You don’t want to leave those people behind,” Layden said.
“I don’t know what happened in those conversations, but it’s a pretty dramatic decision.”
With Sony planning to scrap physical discs, there are also concerns about the inability to resell games or buy them used in the future, which Layden said “used to be a big factor” in the industry, but the advent of digital games “kind of crushed the used game business and made it difficult for people who were making a nickel on the secondary market selling them.”
However, he doesn’t necessarily believe this drove Sony’s decision because it has happened over time, but he believes that “we’ve reached a kind of homeostasis where it’s in a weird kind of balance.”
“Second-hand gaming obviously still occurs, but it’s no longer significant for the company to worry about,” Layden added.
Following Sony’s announcement, new reports claimed that the company is testing a disc-to-digital feature for existing consoles and could also release a next-generation Project Helix console without a disc drive.
While there’s no telling whether Microsoft plans to follow Sony’s all-digital business practices later, Layden believes the huge decision could influence other companies, including Microsoft and Nintendo, to follow suit.
“It’s certainly an industry where if one company, especially the leader of the industry, makes a decision of this magnitude, it will greatly affect what the others do,” he said.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews and opinions in your feeds. Be sure to click the Follow button!
The best gaming consoles
