
I’ll preface this by admitting that I don’t really know how to run a multinational media empire. But if you want to run one that upsets consumers over and over again, all while maintaining an extremely negative public image, look to Sony for an example.
You probably already know what this is about, considering the next-level backlash that Sony is facing: It’s their decision to discontinue physical installments for PS5 games as of January 2028.

But in case you’ve never heard of Sony, they’d be the company which suggested that gamers work more hours so they could afford a PS3. They also recalled every one of their laptop batteries because they explode. They’re also the company who made MediaGo, which stores huge thumbnails for files offsite, so you’ll see those thumbnails on a new device which doesn’t have those files. They’re also the company which made their gaming portable with a disk drive, wrecking its battery life. Or there’s the time when Sony attempted to justify installing rootkits on people’s devices by saying that most people don’t know what a rootkit is.
Now, in an age where media companies want you to spend on licenses rather than ownership, Sony wants their Playstation games to be all digital. They want you to own nothing, not even the disk the games come on, all while being the central hub for all the media which you purchased the licenses for.
What really surprises me about this is that Sony has fans. As in, legit fanboys who, upon hearing the news, were ready to defend Sony in their latest decision, presumably after getting up, looking in the mirror, and saying “How is this guy in front of me going to be a free shill for a media empire, today?”

Those fans are doing their own part to make sure that Sony doesn’t get any better. After all, if sales for their hardware is still measured in the tens of millions, is there much expectation that they’re going to improve?
I know that games these days are becoming more data intensive, and physical data storage is becoming more expensive. Thus, for game companies to develop a preference for digital downloads is easy to understand. But what’s really irksome about how Sony is handling this is how they’re abruptly going full-tilt on digital downloads, all while putting words in our mouths by suggesting that the change represents changing preferences, as though gamers who primarily download the games they play didn’t want a physical alternative for those who want it.
If you’ve read some of my other gaming articles, you might get the idea that I’m a Nintendo fan. I think that sounds accurate. And being a Nintendo fan is easy, for a simple reason: the games are fun. Which is the whole point of video games.
A Sony fan is probably vexed that there are as many Nintendo fans as there are, and that Nintendo’s Switch system has been beating the pants off the Playstation brand. It’s probably a mystery to them why a game system with nearly decade-old tablet technology has pushed Nintendo back to the point of being market leader, while Sony and Microsoft are pushing for photorealistic graphics on expensive hardware.
Nintendo fans have figured something out. That’s that a game can be entertaining, well-made, interesting, accessible, and even a masterpiece, and it doesn’t have to be photorealistic to do it.
Breath of the Wild was considered the greatest game of the previous generation, an honor it arguably shares with its sequel, Tears of the Kingdom. It accomplished this with relatively-simple cel-shaded graphics. It didn’t devour space on a Blu-ray, nor did it need a supercomputer to run. Nintendo makes games fun to play, and they understand that that’s the point.
It also helps that Nintendo cares about their public image.
The ironic thing about all this is that Sony turned the Playstation brand into a household name by embracing optical media, while Nintendo insisted on cartridges. Since then, Nintendo decided to use optical media, but has then decided to primarily use game cards (a form of cartridge), and is back to being market leader, while Sony’s decision to ditch optical media (and physical media on the whole) may have destroyed the Playstation brand.
At this point, if you’re a gamer, the way to go is with a gaming PC, even with RAM as expensive as it is. And if you can wait for data centers to decide that they’ve had enough, prices on RAM are likely to plummet as the market determines the price of what may be overproduced. But even as it is, you can build a gaming PC that outperforms the Steam console for the same money. And it will be a sweeter deal when RAM becomes cheaper.
In fact, LinusTechTips has already built a gaming PC that demolishes the Gabe Cube:
Microsoft seems to be looking for a graceful way for Xbox to fail out, and now Sony is being disgraceful with how they’re looking to discontinue physical media.
So, the best configuration seems to be gaming PC plus Nintendo Switch 2 (if you care about Nintendo exclusives).






















