- Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden says Sony’s decision to remove physical discs is ‘pretty dramatic’
- Layden remembers a time when digital sales “were zero percent” because Sony had no market
- He believes the move will also mean the PS6 will not have a disc drive.
Former PlayStation Worldwide Studios boss Shawn Layden has shared his thoughts on Sony’s decision to stop producing physical discs and its plan to go all-digital, calling it “a pretty dramatic decision.”
In an interview with Eurogamer following the explosive news, the 32-year-old PlayStation veteran confirmed that he “had no idea it was going to happen and “doesn’t necessarily agree with it.”
As for why he thinks Sony made that decision, he suggested, “Maybe it’s too prohibitive to remove discs,” but believes any major move to discontinue a product, feature or model is “very much” a “simple spreadsheet.” [decision]”.
“What are record sales compared to digital sales? And I’m old enough to remember when digital sales were 10 percent; I’m old enough to remember when digital sales were zero percent because we didn’t have a digital market! And that number just grew over time,” Layden said.
The former PlayStation leader suggested that the COVID pandemic played a role in accelerating the purchase and consumption of digital games over physical ones, and believes that Sony’s decision could mean that the PS6 will not have a disc drive.
Analysts have also determined that the next-generation PS6 console will be released in late 2028 and will not have a disc drive, or at least one will be sold separately “to play older PS4 and PS5 games on disc.”
In fact, Layden revealed that getting rid of the PlayStation disc drive was something the company considered for a year while he worked there.
“I’ve been asked this question every year for the last 20 years. ‘When are you going to give up the drive?’ “My feeling about it was always, well, when I get to a place where I feel comfortable enough to believe that around the world, broadband performance is good enough to support that download experience, good enough to reach most customers,” Layden said.
He clarified: “Majority doesn’t mean totality, so there’s a point, a tipping point, where if I have 80 percent of the opportunity, which is 95 percent of the revenue stream, what is my incentive to keep the lights on for the other 20 percent if it’s really only 5 percent of the business? See what I’m saying? At some point, it becomes obvious that we can’t keep all of this going just for this small slice of opportunity.”
While Layden admits that Sony had always been “pretty good” at determining the risk of overestimating regional Internet infrastructure, “because unlike Xbox, PlayStation had a broader global fan base, and not just in numbers, but also in reach, because Sony Corp had reach all over the world,” there are also gamers who don’t have access to the Internet, such as people on military bases.
“The idea that they could still buy a PlayStation 4 game, put it in a machine and play was important. You don’t want to leave those people behind,” Layden said.
“I don’t know what happened in those conversations, but it’s a pretty dramatic decision.”
As Sony plans to get rid of physical discs, there are also concerns about not being able to resell games or buy them secondhand in the future, which Layden said “used to be a huge factor” in the business, but the rise of digital games “kind of killed off that used game business and made things harder for people who were making a nickel and dime on the secondary market selling them.”
However, he doesn’t necessarily think this drove Sony’s decision because it’s been happening over time, but he thinks “we’ve reached a kind of homeostasis where everything is in some kind of weird balance.”
“Obviously second-hand games still happen, but I think it’s not important for the business to worry about anymore,” Layden added.
Following Sony’s announcement, new reports claimed that the company is testing a disc-to-digital conversion feature for existing consoles and could also release a next-generation Project Helix console without a disc drive.
While it’s unknown whether Microsoft plans to follow Sony’s all-digital business practice in the future, Layden believes the huge decision could influence other companies, including Microsoft and Nintendo, to follow suit.
“Certainly this is an industry where if one company, particularly the industry leader, makes a decision of this magnitude, that will greatly influence what others do,” he said.
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