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[OM3G4_247]

My youngest brother has his kids playing on his retro consoles. Mostly stuff from his childhood though, so more PS2 era.

Blu-rays are becoming more popular with younger people lately though, there's a trend towards physical media. As with vinyl, it's mostly niche labels driving it. Most of the big studios have either already pulled out or are in the process of doing so.

I would imagine this is a bigger part of Sony's decision than people realise. In the Americas there's only a single production plant left and signs don't point to things going well there. Anecdotal, but I feel when I order US BDs it's a lottery - it's more often than I like that I open brand new out the packaging discs to find fingerprints and scratches. I just recently returned Life of Brian on 4K for being unplayable due to large circular scratches.

Thankfully I've never had a problem with European discs, but there is only so much capacity to go around and its shrinking.

This is starting to feel like a personal attack on my age
When PS3 starts to become one of the retro consoles, I was on my way to high school!


Funny you mention the poor quality there in "Murica".
This reminds me of how Toyota and Nissan are quietly warning Japanese buyers that American-built cars might be lower quality than what they would have come to expect.
Seems manufacturing quality over in America is lower in other industries too (at least comparing industries where there are alternatives in other counties).

 

[KenMasters]

This is starting to feel like a personal attack on my age
When PS3 starts to become one of the retro consoles, I was on my way to high school!

Megadrive / SNES was what we were gaming on when I entered High School

Funny you mention the poor quality there in "Murica".
This reminds me of how Toyota and Nissan are quietly warning Japanese buyers that American-built cars might be lower quality than what they would have come to expect.
Seems manufacturing quality over in America is lower in other industries too (at least comparing industries where there are alternatives in other counties).

The plant's actually in Mexico, there are no US based Blu-ray facilities. It's said they're struggling to keep up and working conditions are poor.

 

[Evil_Villain]

Come to think of it, ps5 is the last generation of console that will have games be somewhat playable in 20 30 years time. But the games available these days are too cumbersome for people to be playing in 20 years time like we have no problem to pick up and play old ps2 and prior games.

Once the ps6 store gets shut down, that's it for that system.

Sure there will be emulation and whatnot but meh.

 

[OM3G4_247]

Megadrive / SNES was what we were gaming on when I entered High School



The plant's actually in Mexico, there are no US based Blu-ray facilities. It's said they're struggling to keep up and working conditions are poor.

I feel better now thanks

On a related note, apparently we can also partly blame AI for the end of Physical media:
Source: Sony’s PlayStation disc factory is already being repurposed

On face value it seems Sony has been planning on killing discs for a while now, so this might just be a simple matter of the facility being repurposed.
However, knowing corporations, I think it's safe to assume it likely helped drive the decision to end it sooner rather than later.

As the RAM and GPU industry have proven, companies will always choose the option that makes more money regardless of PR.
So I think it's safe to assume Sony pushed for this because it would make more money this way.