I played my first video game when I was 3 years old. We had a Sega Genesis with the 6-pak value cart.

The first game I played on this was Super Hang-On. My tiny toddler brain was not really aware of what was going on, but it knew it was enjoying the images of the man on the motorcycle drifting around.

I ended up playing this cartridge a lot (albeit, not really understanding that games had a goal, it was more of a jingle-keys to). I’d watch my dad play through Streets of Rage, and remember when I realized there was more than the first level that I had become hooked. Basically, it was a bad move on my parent’s part because I became hooked to playing games. I have been playing quite literally my whole life. Even in periods where I was more interested being a social kid and tinkering on websites and software online, I was still taking time to play flash games, Minecraft, whatever I could. It is my biggest vice, but one that I love to have.

When you’re a kid, you almost never take time to think of things like politics, industry trends and economics. You are given many things to entertain yourself with, and for many people video games are one of those – whether you had a console or are a “iPad kid,” you were typically playing a video game at some point. And honestly, with a fully developed frontal-lobe, you can look back and realize the games as a product, as a technical interactive program, were bad. But that’s the interesting thing: your age and worldview skew perspective to wear even the most busted games would be hours of fun to you.

This post is a diary entry, a reflection that I wanted to share for many reasons, but I was given the inspiration because of the news out of PlayStation today: https://blog.playstation.com/2026/07/01/physical-disc-production-ending-in-january-2028-for-new-games-releasing-on-playstation-consoles/. This along the recent news that the new GTA will not have a disc in its physical release, there is a lot of talk again about wanting to “own” something. I had a discussion with a friend about this to some degree and it was an interesting dissection of the industry, and I wanted to talk about all of it.

Players and the Corporations are Symbiotic

I want to open by noting that nothing lasts forever. Things will always change. But it is important with how (relatively) young the gaming industry is that we state with how the relationship between the player or consumer and the publisher/developer used to be. Funnily enough, we see despite being so young, this cycle is occurring in some similar way now.

The first home console released in 1972 with the Magnavox, but the true starting point was with the 1975 release of Home Pong from Atari. Arcades were all the rage – games were a new product that the youth wanted to experience every pixel of. This grew exponentially thanks in part to Nintendo, then Sega. The industry learned quickly with the game crash of 1983 – in which we see a similar story to today in where a plethora of games released at poor quality, leading to a recession in the industry. I want to forward to my childhood era of games – for me this really kicked up with the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo Gamecube (and Gameboy Advance).

I’ll spare the details of child-like awe (because those rose tinted glasses are a big part of why we feel the games “back then” were better), but there is still some merit in the sentiment we share about the games back in the day. 3D graphics really reinvigorated the industry, and we saw many game enthusiast become developers and publishers. Lots of games had hit in the late-90s to mid 2000’s that, by today’s standards are bare bones, were still oozing with creativity, passion and fun. Halo’s approach to sci-fi shooting in space environments with aliens and a zombie-apocalypse type threat were massive for the FPS genre. Sonic’s early 3D titles, while technically borky, were still filled with creative ideas and fun stories. Resident Evil was released, as well as Silent Hill and others that virtually created the survival horror genre as it is today.

If you were born in the mid to late-90s, you were basically playing the establishment of the modern era of games – and it was awesome. And this is why we see the downfall of quality as they had seen back in the 80s. A young industry tends to run based on the passion of the people making the product and the excitement of people ready to consume it. 3D games was the second genesis of the gaming industry again, a sort of reset, and so we all were subject to being the young, hyped consumers much like our parents may have been in the 80s. But, industries tend to eventually default to business-first relationships with their consumers, because non-stop corporate growth means needing to change things to sustain that growth forever.

This is why you shift towards the 2010’s and start to notice the little things be left behind. The Nintendo Powers and Game Informers – physical media covering news on video games were important pieces that fed to the gaming culture and kept players in the know, ready to get the next title. But as our consumer electronics got smarter, got hooked up to the internet at all times, people started to want content conveniently delivered straight into their new smartphones. And since we are becoming strictly business entities by this point, of course we see companies push their news strictly to websites – why spend money on printing magazines when we can save that to expand our revenue?

Mobile Gaming takes a swing at becoming the next genesis of gaming from around 2009-2014. A lot of people who never played video games were now having micro-game experiences with titles like Temple Run, Cut the Rope, Angry Birds, and so on. This influx of new potential customers and their wants do not go unseen – companies immediately bend the knee in a chase to strike lightning and begin shoveling out low-effort mobile game apps. While it seems to do well now, a personal example I remember is the announcement of Sim City Buildit – instead of continuing the series in the environment players wanted, EA (of course) wanted to grab the casual mobile gamer market with this IP. We see this a lot in this era – people wanted to play little mobile games, so developers tried to offer watered down experiences of their popular IPs: Sonic The Hedgehog 4, Plants vs Zombies 2 immediately come to my mind.

It’s not to say these titles are awful are unplayable – it is to illustrate the header point here: a new base of gaming consumers came to the market, so these apps were made out of profit chasing over wanting to create a fun, creative experience for the consumers. It’s a symbiotic relationship: what players en masse become comfortable with are what the publishers and corporations will gauge. Then, when the heavy hitters like Sony, Nintendo, Xbox do that, this shifts the pendulum the other way: AA and smaller studios and publishers will start to see you can get away with X and they will do it too.

In 2017, Fortnite Battle Royale dropped. It was relatively bare bones, but it provided a unique multiplayer experience in the live service industry: drop into a map and collect resources to fight and be the last alive, all while being able to build your own cover on the fly. I didn’t get the bug until later in 2018, but Fortnite is an immaculate example of these industry relationships. It became popular fast – its Battle Pass has become a main stay in nearly every live service game at this point. Fun combat mechanics where the development team was actively engaged with the community for feedback, were providing fun little updates mid-season to change up meta and introduce whacky items. Every new season became a sort of event akin to a new DLC character announcement for Smash Bros. Fortnite has had to go through major changes over the years and it makes sense – there is a business tied to this (one of the largest game companies in the world) and live service takes money to keep going.

It’s interesting to be close to an “OG” player because you get to watch how these changes in consumer trends and industry moves effect ongoing products like Fortnite. While the gameplay is still fun at times today, we have fallen into that sort of “mobile game” demand again. Fortnite players (I am guilt too) have always begged for collaborations with certain IPs. In 2018-2020, collabs were relatively sparse but were always a spectacle when they happened. The Thanos collab had you able to become the man himself and fight the whole lobby. Even in 2022 – when IP collabs opened the flood gates with ones like Dragon Ball – we still got limited time items, weapons, map adjustments and so on. It was solidifying the game as an ever-changing experience, driven by the world’s most popular media. That was fun!

But, skins. The popularity of these collabs were a signal that the player base really wanted skins first and foremost. And that, again, does not go unseen. So, the knee-jerk reaction Epic has taken at this point in time is to release new collab skins almost weekly. Just purchasable cosmetics – most are only skins only with no new items, events, quests to accommodate them like before. And I truly don’t believe the player base *only* wanted more collab skins – but this symbiotic relationship is a sort of monkey’s paw.

A consumer want was caught by business greed, and now the average game of Fortnite feels more like doing a chore. A chore that is only a little enjoyable because you get to wear your new $20 outfit (that you will replace with a new one in a week or two). The community has shared its sentiment about how modern Fortnite feels:

Anecdotal, but there is a sentiment to be had when a product starts out with its uniqueness and creative approach, but becomes a business to sell a Roblox-like environment and skins. Epic saw players wanted more skins of IPs, they shifted focus to obtaining those, saw players still buy their product, and realized they can go ahead and raise the prices of their digital currency for said skins while laying off vital dev staff and leaving a shell of a game in its wake.

This happens all the time in our current era of the gaming industry. Live service really did some irreparable damage, but single-player titles become effected as well. This also touches to the product aspect itself…

Physical Media

While it has become unfeasible to try and process a 50+ GB game off a Blu-Ray disc with a optical drive, the idea of still “owning” a disc (even if it is just a license code read or partial install package) is nice. We have had this ritual since the beginning of the industry: you buy a new game, you receive a product. The box with iconic artwork on the front – a list of details and tidbits on the back – a disc or cart with the game on it. Manuals to but…

I would say at this point, I have become more of a PC gamer than a console one – and PC gamers stopped owning their games a long time ago. This isn’t anything new, it’s just now to a point where console gamers are getting that hit too. And I completely understand the resentment – the console was always the easy entry point to gaming for most people, and inserting a disc to play a game was the main function of that box. But we have seen Sony and Xbox try to kill out the disc over the years, and we have finally gotten the announcement today they’re done as of 2028.

Consoles had a place in the industry for a long time because they fulfilled a need: at first, they were to bring the arcade home. Then, with 3D Graphics, they were bringing the power of modern games home and meant you didn’t have to fiddle with a PC. But, as game’s graphics and scope hit a plateau (which I feel happened around 2016/2017) and consumers were wanting for more cross-platform support, (a trend which the publishers were reluctant to do) consoles – in my mind – started to become a confusing product. Nintendo follows their Blue Ocean strategy – their consoles make sense because they simply REFUSE to publish their games to other platforms. Sony and Xbox have essentially opened their castles up at this point. At one point just about 10 years ago, being able to play the same game online on your PlayStation with people on an Xbox seemed like an outlandish idea. We had exclusives bring players to a console and build loyalty – but now those all get published to Steam as well.

Basically, console gaming is going away – the signs have been there and they are becoming more apparent now. And the disc was always one of the things stopping them. Consoles are now essentially specialized gaming PCs (I mean, they always have been, but consumers didn’t think of it like that). Xbox gave it all up and tried to advertise that your PC, TV, and anything on the internet was “an Xbox.” It’s obvious that the shift the industry is making here is informed, but the symbiotic relationship isn’t being honored here properly. Because games weren’t just software to the large console market – they were a product. Something to share, resale, claim is “yours.” This is where things feel muddy, because it’s obvious much like the Fortnite player base, a lot of people just want to get the game content loaded in and go. A lot also want to have the physical product still – when there’s a split, it’s easier to go with the cheaper path, and Sony and Xbox are going that way.

So, now console gamers join the PC gamers and no longer own the products they’re playing. Over-consuming of the digital landscape of games fuels the decision for suits at these big game companies to say “okay, we can take away all the ownership now” and we’re left with where we are today.

Unrecognizable Beast

Where we are now is an unrecognizable beast. A lot of people reference back to 1983’s game crash (like I did earlier) but this has gone beyond that. Honestly, it’s not just the games industry but the world as a whole right now – post-COVID has seen an everlasting hunger to over consume product. People fight one another to buy out entire stocks of Labubus, trading cards, Stanley cups and so on. Companies constantly promote limited edition collabs with celebrities and other brands (the Fortnite effect) almost all the time, creating artificial trends through FOMO. The overall consumer in the world has fueled part of the problem we see across industries and specifically with the gaming industry.

This lust to consume is further increasing the lack of quality in single player and live service games, the further positioning and normalization of gating content behind DLC/premium editions, and so on. Companies need to make money and WANT to make as much as they can – when we all act like animals in our consumption, they will reciprocate by charging you more while taking more away and giving you a lesser product.

We have a lesser, more expensive Fortnite right now. We get lesser, more expensive games as a whole. This consumption market is why we see lots of creative games developed themselves around a gacha model: Genshin Impact, NTE, Zenless Zone Zero, and so many provide fun content for free – oozing with passion, but now passionate, creative products must now still sell as a live service money generator. We are by nature partially to blame, because we ask for these types of things without realizing what a business decision will do to us as a consumer.

This current physical media discourse keeps bringing up the line “remember when you used to buy a game, and all you had to do was put the disc in and play?”

I do remember – and technical limitations aside – I think we forget we have asked for some of this, and need to start reminiscing – “remember when you save your game and turn it off, or when you would finish your dungeon and log out?”

It is important to try and buy wisely. If you love live service, that is fine. But again, people who play games consistently their whole life – like me – need to be more aware. I am part of the problem! We want skins, live service packs, gachas, all while chanting that physical media is king. A suit at Sony will give you the cheap, quick money making thing you want – but they will gladly take away anything else that will save them money and take more from you.

Just something to rant about, maybe keep in mind. It’s not blowing up, the world isn’t ending, but the current gaming industry is just in a mysterious and anti-consumer space at this point.