Hideo Kojima expresses his sadness at the disappearance of the physical format on PlayStation

This weekend Hideo Kojima, designer responsible for sagas such as Death Stranding and Metal Gear, is in Rome to participate in the Il Cinema in Piazza film festival. During his speech at the event, he was asked about Sony’s decision to abandon, as of January 2028, the production of physical discs for new games that come to PlayStation consoles. Kojima is a renowned lover of the physical format, so his response has been as expected from a person who appreciates his bookshelf.

Kojima says that, as someone who has grown up with the physical format, Sony’s decision to stop producing discs for new PlayStation games is something that makes him feel «very, very sad.» The Japanese designer explains that he has recently acquired many Blu-rays and even CDs. However, Kojima believes that the transition from physical to digital formats of films and video games is different. While cinema has made the leap to streamingvideo games are downloaded to a storage device, so at the very least the data is still on hardware that belongs to the customer.

What Kojima says is true, games in streaming They are a tiny market next to healthcare services. streaming of movies and series. However, users should be aware that any purchase of a digital product on the PlayStation Store does not transfer ownership to the customer, but rather acquires a personal license to use it privately.

Kojima adds that in the future video games will become part of a streaming service. streaming after which there will be a company, which will be the owner of the servers and which will allow access to the data in exchange for a subscription. When that time comes, the Japanese designer recognizes that nothing will be his property. In the cinema the platforms in streaming They are very popular, but the physical format still exists. On PlayStation it will disappear in 2028 and everything will be digital, either with data downloads or in streaming.

At the end of June Sony announced the removal of more than 500 movies from the PlayStation Store, telling customers who had purchased them that they will lose their access without being entitled to a refund. It’s a good demonstration that they had paid for a revocable license.

These days a Kojima tweet published in 2021 has resurfacedwhere it advanced that at some point even digital data would cease to be the property of users and that access to it could be prevented. Five years ago the Japanese designer already expressed his fear of losing access to movies, books and music. Now you need to add the games to the list, at least if you have a PlayStation. Kojima is working for PlayStation Studios on a spy game called Physint that he won’t be able to get his hands on because it will arrive beyond 2028, when Sony will have stopped producing discs.