If you happened to see Michael J. Olson and Yung Kim’s recent report through analyst firm Piper Jaffray, you may have flown into a panic. The two have suggested that by 2022, there will be no more physical media in the gaming market. That would mean that Xbox Scarlett and PlayStation 5 might not include drives for discs—or even be compatible with them.
Naturally such a possibility is highly disturbing. Those of us hoping for backwards compatibility for PS5 would see our hopes dashed, since there would be no way to use our old gaming discs in our next gen consoles. Even if the unit was backwards-compatible, we’d still get stuck re-purchasing a lot of old games.
How realistic is this report however? Well, it’s hard to say. Is it possible that both Sony and Microsoft could ditch discs forever? Sure. But is it likely? Probably not. Consider how many other alarmist predictions we’ve heard about new technology going away forever (including consoles), and how they didn’t come true.
Thankfully, there are a few reasons why it is quite unlikely that consoles will go fully discless:
• Video games are massive now. Seriously, it’s not uncommon for them to reach around 100 GB. Think how often you’d have to delete games and re-download them later to deal with the shortage of space on your hard drive, which would be perpetual.
• Games will probably take up even more space as times goes on. That will just raise the problem to a new level. If anything, that calls for the development of new physical media, not the removal of it.
• Gamers have to deal with data caps. 500 GB a month is typical. Without physical media, think how fast a gamer could end up running up against that cap.
• Finally, what about retailers? What retailer is going to order, stock and sell consoles without being able to also sell games for those consoles?
All of these are sound, logical reasons why it would be incredibly foolhardy of Microsoft and Sony to do away with physical media. If they do end up making such a terrible decision, it seems likely that the backlash will result in a quick reversal in the future. Let’s just hope they aren’t that foolish to begin with.