Sony buries its head in sand as gamers haven't heard a peep since July 1st

It is a famous myth that ostriches bury their heads in the sand to avoid looking at their problems. While Sony is not an ostrich, it has taken a page out of these mythical ostriches and has gone radio silent following the announcement that PlayStation will be moving away from physical game disks in 2028.

Sony announced on July 1st on the official PlayStation Blog that the company will be killing physical game disks starting in January 2028. At the same time, Sony also announced that it will shut down online stores for the PS3 and PS Vita by 2027. This means that, once the PS3 and PS Vita stores are offline, gamers will no longer be able to buy new games for these platforms online. While Sony has pledged that users will be able to download their already-purchased content after the closure date “for the foreseeable future”, nobody knows how long that will last.

Sony’s unfortunate announcement post on X has so far garnered over 143 million views. Sony has not said a word about the situation since then. Neither on X nor on the PlayStation Blog. Sony has gone radio silent, hoping that gamers will move on. But it appears unlikely as the outrage only seems to have grown over the past few days.

From regular gamers to industry journalists, overwhelmingly majority of people are pissed at Sony. People are worried that the move is meant purely as a tactic to increase profits. There are also concerns regarding the preservation of content that users have already paid for. Under Sony’s official PSN policy, a PSN account that remains inactive for 36 months will be permanently deleted. Sony will notify a user after 36 months of inactivity and give a 6-month grace period for reactivation. At the end of the grace period, all your digital purchases, including games and DLCs, will be deleted with no way of recovering them.

In other words, with the PS6, which is likely to be all-digital, you will lose access to your games that you have bought with your own money if you don’t meet Sony’s conditions.

Moreover, gamers have also noticed the peculiar timing of Sony’s announcement. Sony delivered the news right when the industry was focused on Xbox’s planned studio closures and mass layoffs. So, it appears Sony had always planned to stay silent and let the controversy surrounding Xbox take the heat away from the company.

Whatever the case may be, it is mighty disappointing that Sony resorts to playing a mute rather than listening and engaging with the community on an issue that could reshape console gaming forever.

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