As Sony begins adding new warnings to PlayStation 5 boxes about its plans to ditch physical games, a Mexican politician has accused the company of only offering ‘tenant rights’ to paying customers.
Video game publishers have often U-turned on unpopular decisions if there’s a noisy enough backlash from customers, but it’s been more than a month since Sony announced it is abandoning physical games after 2027 and it clearly has no intention of backtracking no matter how angry people get.
Aside from already converting its primary disc manufacturing factory to make something else, Sony finally commented on the backlash last week and said it is going through with the plans anyway, albeit ‘cautiously’ – which is a diplomatic way of saying it doesn’t care about the complaints.
Now it’s been discovered that new PlayStation 5 consoles with the built-in disc drive come with a warning label on their boxes to inform new customers of Sony’s all-digital future.
The labels were first spotted by BehindTGames on X, who shared a photo of a PlayStation 5 box they received from someone else.
The box sports a large black label with ‘Important Notice’ written in all caps and essentially repeats the same information Sony shared on the PlayStation Blog last month.
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‘From Jan. 2028, newly released games on PlayStation will be available for purchase on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital format only,’ it reads. ‘Discs for games released before Jan. 2028 can continue to be played on this console.’
This is Sony covering itself so people can’t complain about no longer being able to buy new physical PlayStation 5 games for the console. If that was enough of a deal breaker that you wouldn’t have bought the console to begin with, then it’s not Sony’s fault you didn’t check the label – or at least that’s their logic.
The fact that Sony specifically refers to ‘newly released games on PlayStation’ also lends further credence that the PlayStation 6 won’t come with a disc drive and will be a purely digital console.
However, you could see Sony offering a disc drive add-on, like it does for digital versions of the PlayStation 5, assuming the PlayStation 6 is backwards compatible with the PlayStation 5.
It’ll be interesting to see if the outrage over all this will actually lead to dwindling PlayStation 5 sales or poor launch sales for the PlayStation 6, but the financial losses would have to be catastrophic for Sony to reconsider.
Alternatively, the best course of action is to more strongly champion for improved digital ownership, since no one really owns their digital games but rather licences that can very easily be taken away, as evidenced by how people had digital movies they bought removed from their libraries without any sort of refund.
There has been some pushback from politicians over this. Recently, Mexican senator Luis Donaldo Colosio and lawmaker Iraís Reyes shared on Instagram that they had filed a complaint against Sony to Mexico’s antitrust authority, arguing that Sony is essentially forcing customers into renting games, not owning them.
‘Starting in 2028, PlayStation will stop releasing games on physical media. Their digital store will become the sole distribution channel in Mexico: with prices and terms dictated exclusively by Sony, without any possibility of reselling, lending, or trading,’ wrote Colosio (as translated by RespawnFirst).
‘And what you buy digital isn’t yours, it’s a license that can be taken away from you. … You pay owner price. They give you tenant rights.’
Last month, French presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon criticised Sony’s plans on X, saying, ‘With GTA 6 without a disc in 2026 and Sony’s announcement of the end of physical disc sales for games in 2028, the question arises of how we view these products.’
In a follow-up post, he added, ‘With the end of physical games, the video game industry wants to impose a fully digital model on us, where access will be conditional and time limited.
‘The buyer’s rights will be denied. This is the triumph of total commodification: you pay full price for nothing more than a simple revocable right of access. Let’s not let them confiscate our cultural heritage. Let’s take back control!’
Meanwhile in Brazil, federal deputy Erika Hilton has pushed for an investigation into Sony, arguing that its physical games decision could violate the country’s Consumer Protection Code by restricting consumers’ rights since it is essentially forcing you to buy first party games through the PlayStation Store.
‘The end of physical game media is a trend we need to defeat. This represents the end of the lending culture, the used games market, and real game ownership by players,’ Hilton told Voxel.
‘This is the gateway to new monopolistic practices by console manufacturers and increasingly expensive and abusive subscription services.’
The EU, however, has no intention of challenging Sony, with Michael McGrath, the EU commissioner for Democracy, Justice, the Rule Of Law, and Consumer Protection, saying Sony’s free to sell its games however it wants so long as ‘consumer rights are fully protected in line with national and EU law.’
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