Is physical media too much to ask for?

You’ll probably have heard that PlayStation announced a cease on physical disc production from January 2028. Naturally, there have been plenty of memes but people are generally pissed off by the news. There are petitions, a growth in jailbreaking PS5’s, silence from industry trade body, and signposting the wider ramifications of the decision. I wasn’t going to write about this too much beyond joining in with the memes but hearing stories about what physical media has meant to people in their childhoods made me think of my own experiences. The most excitement I’ve ever felt after receiving media was from physical media. Holding video games in my hand or records or CDs or even VHS tapes and just staring at the covers for ages felt like a human rite of passage. The tactility of it all is so overlooked now and maybe even back then. And it’s not just physical media that has felt a shift from a tangible experience to an on/off switch. Game manuals slowly became one-sheet inserts and then…