A new report claims that Sony is sending out “a bigger survey than they’ve sent almost ever before” to developers, with one particularly interesting question asking for their thoughts on the end of physical disc production for PS5.
The report comes from notable YouTube tech reporter Moore’s Law is Dead, and was spotted by Eurogamer. The channel’s host Tom says he’d received word of the survey being sent out from industry contacts.
“There is a survey Sony sent out to developers – [that’s] what I was told by my contacts – that is a bigger survey than they’ve sent almost ever before, if not ever before,” he said. “And there was a question in it basically trying to ask in a not direct way: is there any issue with how we sell games physically, or something – asking developers for feedback on killing discs.”
There’s no further evidence or reports of the survey being sent at the moment. In July, Sony announced it planned to entirely cease physical disc production by Early 2028. From that point on, PS5 will only support digital releases. The public backlash to this announcement was immediate, and has been sustained ever since, filling up nearly every PlayStation social media post and stream chat.
But there has also been a fairly sizable response on the developer and industry side as well. Michael Yum, CEO of PM Studios, the publisher of Black Myth Wukong, called the move “sad and devastating.” Hideo Kojima recently commented, saying the only-digital future is “frightening.” And Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director Naoki Hamaguchi stressed that a physical edition of the game was important to the team and fans, saying he was glad they could make it happen before the shutdown.
Digital Foundry’s John Linneman also said recently that at Gamescom, he spoke to a lot of devs and publishers that were “very upset” about Sony cancelling discs.
“I spoke to a lot of developers and publisher people about it and they were largely very upset. A lot of these companies actually see a lot of return, and in fact the majority, through physical sales. I feel like this is really going to affect a lot of businesses.,” Linneman says in a recent YouTube video, “I get the feeling that a lot of these companies really want to put their weight behind the Switch 2 now and sort of try to keep that alive. The industry side of things is not positive right now about what’s happening. There seems to be a lot of resentment for what Sony has done and what they’re doing.”
Sony has only commented on the decision once in a recent earnings call, where it said it’s heard the backlash over PS5 discs but plans to “cautiously move forward.”
