Shawn Layden joined Sony in 1987, eventually taking on leadership roles at the company’s burgeoning video game development studios that led to him becoming chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, a position he retired from in 2019. He knows what it’s taken to build the PlayStation brand, and his feelings about the company’s decision to end physical discs hold more weight than most.
Layden understands the convenience of digital games, as he explains in an interview for The Expansion Pass podcast. But if a rough estimate suggests that 80% of people download games and 20% buy them physically, then Layden says “that’s a super important 20%.” These are the most “faithful of the faithful” players, who’ll show up to buy multiple copies of an individual game to keep in their collection.
For that reason, Layden says, “I don’t agree with that decision.” He caveats all this with the acknowledgement that he has no idea what the situation looks like on PlayStation’s spreadsheets, or the specific financial realities that led Sony down this path.
“But at the same time – I think this is probably the more insidious aspect to it – it changes the conversation from ‘do you own a game?’ Or ‘do you have access to a digital asset?'” Layden says.
“If you can’t sell a thing, that means you don’t own a thing. And if you don’t own it, then what are you buying? If you’re buying access, that doesn’t quite sound as sexy, to be honest. And people, as people tend to do in their mind, they’ll game out the worst-case scenario. That’s a whole lot of brand hit and reputation bite that, as I said, I don’t have any visibility on the financials around it, but that’s a significant brand hit and I hope it made sense to them.”
While I’m one of those gamers who does love collecting for collecting’s sake, the issue of game ownership has always been my biggest concern about PlayStation’s impending all-digital stance. Market experts have noted that a substantial portion of Sony’s biggest games continue to make dump trucks of money on disc, but the company is apparently more concerned about control of the market than the physical-first audience.
Layden has expressed his skepticism about PlayStation going discless in the past, noting that “the market has said they will continue to buy them,” and suggesting that it could “heavily influence” Xbox and Nintendo’s approach to physical games in the future. Either way, Sony’s gonna have a rough time selling a PS6 for $1,000 if the next-gen can only offer modest improvements in its discless future.