The future of video game preservation just took a major hit. This morning, Sony announced that, starting in January 2028, the company will no longer produce physical PlayStation discs, which means that from that moment on you can only purchase new PS5 games digitally. At the same time, Sony also announced that it’s going to start winding down the digital stores for both the PS3 and PS Vita, helpfully illustrating one of the most pertinent issues with a digital-only future for gaming: Once the stores are gone, so are the games. It’s a terrible blow for preservation of the medium.
In a lot of ways, both announcements seemed inevitable. It’s c …