The debate around physical versus digital gaming on console will likely rage all the way up until and past the point in 2028 where Sony no longer manufactures discs for its PlayStation releases. One person who's fully convinced we won't need physical copies of games in the near future is Gordon Thornton, a former PlayStation veteran with 18 years at the company, who was SVP of global direct-to-consumer business. He's credited with making the PlayStation Store what it is today, and so of course he's going to back his baby.
Speaking with Insider Gaming, Thornton explained why he believes that Sony is ready to put forward a digital-only future for gaming:
"The reluctance to adopt digital gaming and the relevance of physical resellers have naturally diminished. In major markets like Western Europe and the US, traditional sofa gaming has moved online, with players connecting from their homes. Furthermore, frequent digital sales and promotions have resulted in consumers waiting for the right digital price drop and purchasing a game for themselves. All of this makes digital appealing to players, more so than the general appeal physical provides, like disc-sharing."
Moreover, Thornton does not believe that prices will go down if Sony shifts to a digital-only space. Instead, he explains that gaming works on a model where it must make as much revenue as possible through things like "embedding sustainable value loops directly within a game to strengthen its user lifetime value and average revenue per paying user." Overall, he expects prices to remain fixed, but that is up to the publisher, not the platform owner, according to Thornton.