After almost a week of no updates, the PlayStation social media accounts have become active again and fans have leapt at the chance to yell about Sony’s physical media plans.
On July 1, Sony took to social media to drop the bombshell that it will stop releasing physical games after 2027 and is shutting down the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita digital stores.
That’s basically the death knell for physical media, and not just in the video game space, so the online reactions have unsurprisingly been overwhelmingly negative.
Tellingly, the PlayStation social media accounts have been completely silent for almost a week, only now becoming active again. Not to address the backlash or acknowledge peoples’ concerns, but to promote a wireless fight stick.
It’s not an especially detailed social media post, consisting only of a 28 second video that doesn’t even show the stick in action, only how easy it is to swap out some of the parts.
The FlexStrike wireless fight stick costs £179.99 and launches on August 6, to coincide with Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, Sony’s exclusive new fighting game in development at Guilty Gear studio Arc System Works.
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Not that the flaccid marketing matters since none of the reactions online are about the stick and are just people bombarding whatever poor soul runs the accounts with their continued frustrations over Sony’s abandoning of physical media.
Reactions on X are full off edited screengrabs meant to mock Sony and let the company know the issue hasn’t just blown over and people are still mad. One person even used their collection of PlayStation games to spell ‘F*** Sony’ and we’ve spotted a few people sharing the same ‘Greed has no limits’ edit of the ‘Play has no limits’ slogan.
Given how quickly they’ve arrived, we have to imagine people have been working on these for the last few days and were just waiting for any sign of life from Sony’s accounts before sharing them.
‘After days of silence, after your post got more views in a few days than PlayStation 2 units sold, after players started looking for ways to push back against your terrible decision to kill physical games… your big response is a video about a peripheral? You’re watching your own legacy burn in real time, and somehow still pretending this is fine,’ reads one baffled message by MagisterMaster.
Others have joked about whether the fight stick is physical or digital, and the official Dominos account has taken another cheeky potshot with ‘Did someone order a digital pizza?’
It’s the same story over on Bluesky, where a handful of people have unsubtly posted pictures of elephants that they demand Sony address.
While the frustration from fans is certainly warranted and it’s not a good look for Sony to not address any of it, there’s really nothing the company can do or say to resolve this.
The writing’s been on the wall regarding the future of physical games for years, with digital sales greatly outselling physical sales, so Sony’s decision, while upsetting, was arguably inevitable.
Plus, Sony’s reportedly already begun repurposing its primary disc manufacturer into something else, so this is clearly a decision the company was committed to, regardless of the public response.
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