The funeral for PlayStation discs has begun

PlayStation 光盘的葬礼已经开始

Cody Spencer, the co-owner of the small games retail chain Pink Gorilla Games, put it well when I asked about the impact of Sony’s recent announcement that it will stop making discs for new games starting January 2028. “It’s sad to see. This decision is only a negative for gamers. We’re losing the ability to sell games, to share games, and to own games.”

当我询问索尼最近宣布将于 2028 年 1 月起停止为新游戏生产光盘的影响时，小型游戏零售连锁店 Pink Gorilla Games 的共同所有人 Cody Spencer 表达得很到位：“看到这一幕令人难过。这个决定对玩家来说只有负面影响。我们正在失去销售游戏、分享游戏以及拥有游戏的能力。”

Sony’s announcement has been devastating news for many in the games industry. Not just players, but also groups like independent retail stores and preservationists that try and make gaming more accessible.

索尼的这一公告对游戏行业的许多人来说是毁灭性的消息。这不仅影响了玩家，还波及了那些致力于让游戏更易于获取的群体，例如独立零售店和游戏保护主义者。

“This is unfortunate news for those who still prefer buying games on physical media, and is certainly a significant hit to consumer rights, the resale market, and game creators whose businesses rely on the physical market,” Frank Cifaldi, executive director of the Video Game History Foundation, says in a statement.

电子游戏历史基金会（Video Game History Foundation）执行董事 Frank Cifaldi 在一份声明中表示：“对于那些仍然倾向于购买实体版游戏的玩家来说，这是一个不幸的消息。这无疑是对消费者权利、二手转售市场以及那些业务依赖实体市场的游戏创作者的重大打击。”

Boutique publishers are also lamenting PlayStation’s announcement. “We are profoundly disappointed by Sony’s decision to suspend physical games production in 2028,” says iam8bit in a statement. “Physical games are vital to games preservation, ownership, and consumer choice, values that have guided iam8bit since our first physical release in 2016. Our commitment to these values remains unchanged. Long live physical media.”

精品游戏发行商也对索尼的公告表示哀叹。iam8bit 在一份声明中称：“我们对索尼决定在 2028 年暂停实体游戏生产感到深感失望。实体游戏对于游戏保护、所有权和消费者选择至关重要，这些价值观自 2016 年我们首次发行实体游戏以来一直指引着 iam8bit。我们对这些价值观的承诺保持不变。实体媒介万岁。”

But the move isn’t exactly unexpected. For a long time now, video game sales have primarily been digital — just look at Capcom saying that 93 percent of its game sales were digital over its last fiscal year. Still, it’s disappointing for people who want to have games in a more tangible form than as data on a hard drive.

但这一举动并不完全出人意料。长期以来，电子游戏销售主要以数字版为主——看看卡普空（Capcom）的数据就知道了，其上一财年的游戏销售额中有 93% 来自数字版。尽管如此，对于那些希望以比硬盘数据更具象的形式拥有游戏的人来说，这仍然令人失望。

The reality is that, despite the outcry, things aren’t going to be different for most people right away. “Physical sales of new PlayStation 5 games have been declining for some time,” Spencer says. “So immediately after the switch to digital only I don’t think we’ll see much of a change.”

现实情况是，尽管舆论哗然，但对大多数人来说，短期内情况并不会发生改变。Spencer 说：“PlayStation 5 新游戏的实体销量已经下滑了一段时间。因此，在全面转向数字版之后，我认为我们不会立即看到太大的变化。”

In five to 10 years, Spencer expects to see “increased prices for the physical titles printed before 2028 and a niche but strong demand for our products.” While that’s good for business, “I’d personally rather not have [that] be the case.”

在五到十年内，Spencer 预计“2028 年之前印刷的实体游戏价格会上涨，且我们的产品将出现小众但强劲的需求。”虽然这对生意有好处，但他表示：“我个人宁愿情况不是这样。”

Even further down the road, “the very idea of physical video games will be foreign and more seen as a novelty, which will not be good for us at all,” Spencer says. “Our type of store may be seen more like a record store. A place for largely the most passionate fans of the medium rather than a spot everyone goes.”

展望更远的未来，Spencer 说：“实体电子游戏的概念将变得陌生，更多被视为一种新奇事物，这对我们来说一点也不好。我们这类商店可能会更像唱片店，是一个主要面向该媒介最狂热粉丝的地方，而不是每个人都会去的地方。”

Sony has already been inching toward a potential digital-only future for a while now. The PS5, after all, launched in 2020 with a cheaper version without a disc drive, and the PS5 Pro requires a separate disc drive purchase if you want to play physical games at all.

索尼其实早已在向潜在的“纯数字”未来迈进。毕竟，PS5 在 2020 年发布时就推出了不带光驱的廉价版，而如果你想玩实体游戏，PS5 Pro 则需要额外购买光驱。

“The challenges of digital preservation aren’t new, nor are they exclusive to the video game industry,” says Andrew Borman, director of digital preservation at The Strong National Museum of Play. He points to things like required online connectivity, frequent game patches, and “much of the game development process happening only using digital tools.” But he says that “it is important that we act now to preserve the history of the industry.”

“数字保护面临的挑战并不新鲜，也不仅限于电子游戏行业，”斯特朗国家游戏博物馆（The Strong National Museum of Play）数字保护主任 Andrew Borman 说道。他指出了诸如强制联网、频繁的游戏补丁以及“大部分游戏开发过程仅使用数字工具完成”等问题。但他强调：“我们现在就采取行动保护行业历史至关重要。”

Cifaldi says that the shift won’t have “as much of an impact as you might expect” to the work of professional preservationists. “The reality is that this continues to be a trend. Sony PlayStation isn’t the first ones doing this nor will they be the last… Museums and archives like ours have been preparing for this future for a while, with the expectation that putting discs on a shelf isn’t going to be a long-term solution for preserving new games.”

Cifaldi 表示，这种转变对专业保护人员的工作“不会产生你预想中那么大的影响”。“现实是这依然是一个趋势。索尼 PlayStation 并不是第一家这样做的公司，也不会是最后一家……像我们这样的博物馆和档案馆早已为这一未来做好了准备，因为我们预见到，将光盘放在架子上并不是保护新游戏的长期解决方案。”