Unsurprisingly, there has been more than a little backlash following Sony’s recent decision to end the production of physical games media in 2028. Much of that backlash has been met with questions from skeptics about the real-world success of physical media compared to digital, and even game preservation experts have highlighted that the death of physical media hardly changes the landscape, given the dependence on day-one patches.
Now, former Valve employee, and writer for Left 4 Dead, Chet Faliszek, has added his voice to the chorus questioning the backlash, with the writer arguing in a recent YouTube video that Sony’s decision is purely a result of consumer choice. He argues that consumers and gamers created the circumstances that drove Sony to make the decision to end physical media production by preferring digital media.
The majority of his argument hinges on Sony’s sales figures, citing financial results that show 78% of game sales on the PS5 and PS4 in the 2025 financial year were digital downloads and not physical media—only 2% more than the previous year. He goes on to cite examples like GameStop’s figures that show just 18% of the company’s revenue comes from games, Xbox Game Pass, which is a digital subscription service.You, the consumer, have made a choice, and your choice is for digital. I keep seeing this, like, ‘Oh, they should do memory cards. They should do…’ Right now, today – the games we are talking about are available at retail today. The used games are available at retail today, and you aren’t going into retail and buying them.Comments on the video are mixed, with some agreeing with his sentiment, while others point out that 22% of game sales is still a significant portion of the overall consumer base. Others pointed out that GameStop itself has acknowledged that a large portion of its revenue is from trading cards, which are currently a hot commodity for speculative investment, so those sales are inflated.
Others still argued that, while digital games have won out as the more convenient option, that’s not for nothing, since many games launch to digital marketplaces weeks or months before the physical versions are available. Additionally, pre-orders and game preloading is a practice that has become all the more common in the modern gaming market, all of which serve to incentivize gamers to pick up digital copies of games instead of physical copies. There are also those who pointed out that the issue isn’t really the physical media at all; rather the issue that it effectively turns the PlayStation Store into a monopoly for PlayStation games.