For some, no support for physical games is the dealbreaker for the PlayStation 6, but its success hinges on its launch titles, hardware, and especially price.
Sony’s plans to ditch physical games are inarguably awful. Even putting aside Sony’s terrible refund policy, an all-digital future on PlayStation means less ownership of the games you purchase and Sony getting to fully dictate how much its games cost, since you won’t be able to to buy them anywhere else but the digital PlayStation Store.
Online outrage has persisted even weeks after the announcement, with many threatening to exit the PlayStation ecosystem entirely. Some fans insist that the lack of support for physical games will also doom the PlayStation 6, which is expected to launch within the next two years.
These people are half-right. The PlayStation 6 faces a steep uphill battle but if it does flop, it will be because of other factors and not because it’ll be a purely digital console.
As others have pointed out, physical games have been fading from relevancy for years thanks to their digital counterparts being more convenient. Sony’s own metrics show that the majority of PlayStation game sales have been digital for a long while and despite complaints of GTA 6 not having a physical version, that game is projected to make as much as $5.2 billion in just one week.
A game as hotly anticipated as GTA 6 underperforming due to being digital-only would certainly send a message to not just Sony but the wider industry… but that’s not going to happen. Too many people are used to the convenience of digital purchases and even some who are upset about the lack of a physical release will still buy it because they won’t want to miss out.
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It’s clear that most ordinary consumers aren’t bothered by Sony’s all-digital future or don’t realise how it impacts them, unless the games they buy are taken away from them or the used games market dries up – by which point it’ll be too late.
If the lack of support for physical games was the only thing the PlayStation 6 had going against it, there wouldn’t be a problem but there are far more important issues than that, all of which Sony has little control over.
The price
The first issue is the price. Obviously, this detail isn’t confirmed, but it’s presumed that the PlayStation 6 will cost £1,000 or, since the global memory shortage keeps making video game and PC hardware more expensive, including the PlayStation 5 – which has ballooned in price since its 2020 launch.
Sony has also said it won’t be selling the console at a ‘significant loss,’ which cements that it’ll be more expensive than a PlayStation 5, which at its cheapest will currently set you back £520.
Even some diehard gamers will scoff at being asked to pay such high prices for a console that’ll be barely be more powerful than the PlayStation 5 or even the PS5 Pro, which itself doesn’t offer that much of a graphical upgrade compared to its weaker sibling. So, why would the casual audience give the PlayStation 6 the time of day?
Launch exclusives
The obvious answer is with some enticing exclusives, but that’s not as simple a solution as it may seem. A £1,000+ price tag is a massive financial commitment and not something many would agree to for only one or two console exclusives unless they’re games with truly massive mainstream appeal.
The PlayStation 5’s customer base will obviously be much larger than the PlayStation 6’s at launch, so if Sony wants new games to sell as many copies as possible and turn a profit, it needs to make them cross-gen releases, which in turn means people will have even less of a reason to get the PlayStation 6.
It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario. Sony could exercise some patience and gradually build the PlayStation 6’s portfolio, but the longer the console’s audience takes to grow means longer support for the PlayStation 5, which only stands to haemorrhage the newer console’s audience potential.
The hardware
The alternative is to offer something unique in the hardware, that isn’t possible with the PlayStation 5, especially since any graphical improvements will be so negligible that most people won’t notice the difference.
Rumours and theories point to Sony working on a new handheld device; something Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hideaki Nishino may have alluded to when he talked about ‘enabling a seamless experience that can be enjoyed naturally beyond the living room.’
A dedicated handheld would be a smart move, especially with how successful Nintendo’s been with the Switch and Switch 2, but a hybrid console that’s as powerful as a PlayStation 5 and capable of running games natively in handheld mode, without overheating or draining its battery extremely quickly, seems impossible.
That’s why it’s rumoured that the handheld will be a separate device and run games at a lower resolution and frame rate, which could tie into a power saver mode Sony added to the PlayStation 5 last year.
Even if this is the case, however, it’s unlikely to be any cheaper than the home version, especially if it really can run PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 6 games. So, Sony can’t even market it as the more affordable option.
These aren’t problems that can be immediately solved by grafting a disc drive onto the PlayStation 6. If anything, Sony’s abandonment of physical media could have been partially motivated to make the PlayStation 6 cheaper to manufacture, since it would no longer need to build in a disc drive.
Some physical game enthusiasts will skip the PlayStation 6 on principle, but the real dealbreaker will be an inflated price tag that the console is incapable of justifying. And the worse thing is not only is there nothing that can be done about it but the same problems will affect every other high-end console and gaming PC, no matter who makes it.
Video gaming may have reached a glass ceiling which is impossible to breach and which Sony and Microsoft seem to have no plan for cicumventing.
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