Hideo Kojima grew up on physical media, and he’s not shy about how he feels watching it disappear. But it’s not the discs themselves that have the Metal Gear and Death Stranding creator sounding the alarm.
Sony confirmed this week that it will stop manufacturing new physical PlayStation discs starting in January 2028, a decision that’s already sparked backlash from collectors, retailers, and even a former PlayStation CEO.
Kojima, who has one of the closest creative relationships with Sony of anyone in the industry, weighed in during a talk at the Il Cinema in Piazza film festival in Italy. His answer didn’t just cover discs. It went somewhere much bigger.
Kojima Warns Cloud Streaming Is the Real Threat to Game Ownership
Kojima said losing physical discs stings, admitting he’s been buying up Blu-rays and CDs while he still can. But he drew a sharp distinction between digital downloads, which still live on a player’s own hardware, and cloud streaming, which doesn’t.
“That is what is frightening,” Kojima said, describing a future where players effectively rent access to a server instead of owning anything at all.
He connected the dots to geopolitics too, pointing out that shifting politics or corporate decisions could cut off access to games and movies entirely. Kojima made clear this isn’t just a gaming problem, adding that whatever happens to games in 2028 “might also happen to movies.”
The comments have reignited a 2021 post from Kojima that’s been circulating again this week, where he wrote that he feared becoming a “have-not,” unable to freely access the movies, books, and music he’s loved if corporations or governments ever pulled the plug.
Sony’s shift lines up with the numbers. Physical discs reportedly made up only a small slice of the company’s total game software revenue in the last fiscal year, a sign the industry has already been moving on without most players noticing. Publishers will still be allowed to sell code-in-box versions of new games, but the disc as a format is on its way out.
Sony’s physical disc manufacturing ends for new PlayStation releases in January 2028.
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