Sony<\/a> in 2019, was asked on The Expansion Pass podcast to give his views on Sony\u2019s all-digital future.<\/p>\nHe replied that while he wasn\u2019t aware of the financial circumstances that may have led to Sony\u2019s decision, he doesn\u2019t think it\u2019s a good idea, because while the majority of players now opt for digital downloads, the ones who buy physical are often the most dedicated collectors.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot having been in the room, I don\u2019t know what the what the stressors were around that, and what the spreadsheet said \u2013 because I\u2019m sure this is heavily spreadsheeted decision, where the costs are being contained and where the profit is being extracted. I don\u2019t know any of that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do think that gamers are\u2026 yeah, we like the digital download. Peple said \u2018oh, downloading a game is easier than going to the store\u2019. No, no. Downloading a game is easier than going across my living room to put a disc in the machine. I don\u2019t even have to do that. I just press a button on my controller and I don\u2019t have to move. And the convenience of that is is unquestioned.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I do think, particularly in in the gaming realm, maybe 80% of the people download and 20% don\u2019t, or whatever that breakdown is going to be. But that\u2019s a super important 20%.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, that is largely the most faithful of the faithful. That is, many times, the people who buy two copies of every game, right? One never gets out of the shrink wrap, right? And you play the other one. It\u2019s just like comic book collectors. you always buy two comic books.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the the ability to have the physical disc\u2026 you know, we\u2019ve got to remember one of the core drivers of the gamer is this desire to collect, right? \u2018I finished Crash Bandicoot, I had 27 of 30 diamonds, oh my God, I have to replay the entire game now because those three diamonds, I\u2019ve missed them somewhere.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are an inquisitive collecting sort of people,\u00a0 and we like to show off our stuff. So I think for those reasons I don\u2019t agree with that decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
Layden then added that the decision to go digital-only also put the debate around game ownership front and centre, and that in situations like that the player will always look at the worst thing that could happen, leading to a hit on Sony\u2019s reputation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this is probably the more insidious aspect to it, is that it changes the conversation [to] \u2018do you own a game or do you have access to a digital asset\u2019, right?<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you can\u2019t sell a thing, that means you don\u2019t own a thing. And if you don\u2019t own it, then what are you buying? If you\u2019re buying access, that doesn\u2019t quite sound as sexy, to be honest. And people, as people tend to do, in their mind they\u2019ll game out the worst case scenario.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that\u2019s a whole lot of brand hit and reputation bite that \u2013 as I said, I don\u2019t have any visibility on the financials around it \u2013 but that\u2019s a significant brand hit, and I hope it made sense to them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former PlayStation US boss Shawn Layden has shared more thoughts on the company\u2019s decision to stop making discs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":793767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[59,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-793766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-gb","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}