Sony Axing Game Discs Will Have Outsized Impact on Low-Income Gamers, Experts Say

Gamers in low-income areas will be among the hardest hit by Sony’s decision to stop producing physical game discs from 2028, experts told Decrypt, while one African games industry expert arguing the continent stands to lose out badly.

The secondary market has long been a cheap way for gamers to get hold of games. The PlayStation Store does run sales, but buying digitally assumes a decent internet connection, which rural households are less likely to have.

"By abandoning physical discs, some players at the bottom of the economic spectrum lose access to physical distribution through retail and, more importantly, discounted used sales," Joost van Dreunen, professor at the NYU Stern School of Business and video game business author, told Decrypt. "It won't immediately show up in the financials of major game makers, since their focus is now on creating premium experiences for a luxury class of gamers."

It comes as the cost of being a gamer is trending upwards. Sony raised PS5 prices in March, for example, citing "pressures in the global economic landscape." Similarly, the next generation of Xbox is expected to cost up to $1,800, according to Fortune.

A spokesperson for UK advocacy group Gamer's Voice told Decrypt that Sony's move to cut discs will "likely affect people on lower incomes more."

'Out of reach for most Africans'

Isa Muhammad, founder of Africa and Middle East-focused games industry platform Bijetic, told Decrypt that the PS5 is already "out of reach for most Africans." He stressed that those who can buy a console still rely on the second-hand games market to afford to play on the consoles.

Well, at least the highest-income Africans could still take advantage of the PlayStation Store discounts, right? Unfortunately not. Muhammad said that the PlayStation Network is only supported in one African nation: South Africa. Many other nations are missing from the PlayStation Network's official list of supported countries.

"A gamer in Nigeria who wants to buy digitally has to set up an account registered in the U.S. or UK, then pay with foreign gift cards or a dollar card," Muhammad said.

Download speeds in rural, remote, and low-income areas are another major hurdle.

"Bandwidth is now part of what a game costs," van Dreunen said. "Roughly one in four rural [American] households has no wired provider offering 100/20 Mbps, and at 10 Mbps a 50GB download takes about 11 hours."

In Africa and the Middle East, Muhammad said, internet speeds vary significantly across the region—from super-fast connections in Dubai to unreliable ones in Iran. Internet access is also costly in some countries.

"Just recently I paid 75,000 NGN (around $55) for a 450GB broadband bundle, which is more than Nigeria's minimum monthly wage," Muhammad told Decrypt. With GTA 6's pre-load file expected to be 212GB, "a gamer here would first spend $80 on the game, then anywhere from $25 to over $60 just to download it, depending on how they buy data."

And at Nigeria's median download speed of 36.77 Mbps, per Speedtest by Ookla, the download would take nearly 13 hours. Not to mention the fact that they'd need to have a non-Nigerian PlayStation account, a download code corresponding to the country their account is supposedly from, and a way to pay in the local currency.

"Sony's own terms say you must register your account in the country where you live, and Sony can suspend or close accounts created with false information," Muhammad told Decrypt. "So every Nigerian or Egyptian on a US or UK PSN account is breaking the rules from day one."

African gamers live in fear of needing help from Sony and being refused it (or worse, banned) because their accounts break its rules, Muhammad explained. In a future where every purchase is digital, it could open the door to gamers losing accounts that hold every game they've ever purchased.

"If a player in Africa buys GTA 6 and can't recover their account, they may have no choice but to buy it again on a new one, along with everything else they've lost," he said. "A disc-free future will see this become the reality for every new PlayStation game, for gamers across most of Africa."