Tens of thousands of gamers were left unable to play digital games for hours on Friday after a PlayStation Network outage, an incident that has reignited concerns over Sony’s plans to phase out physical discs by 2028.
According to Down Detector, which tracks outages, tens of thousands of people globally reported problems with the service. The outage affected gamers' ability to launch games, apps or network features on their PlayStation. One comment on X read: "Can't play digital games till you fix it. Yet I can put my disc in and play. The all digital future looks great."
“Tens of thousands hit by PlayStation Network outage, fuelling fears over Sony's disc-less future.”
By Friday evening, all affected services were up and running, according to Sony's status page. The BBC has approached PlayStation for comment.
The problems began to appear around the same time as an alert from Amazon Web Services that some servers were facing issues, which was earlier resolved.
The outage comes amid a wider debate about the future of physical games. Sony said in a blog post earlier this month that new games would still be able to be bought in shops, but they would come with a digital code. Separately, Grand Theft Auto VI is set to launch as a download-only title, further fuelling speculation about the demise of the disc.
The incident raises an unresolved question: what happens when the next major outage strikes in a disc-less era?