Kojima warns that ending physical game discs could threaten long-term ownership of digital titles

Hideo Kojima told attendees at Italy’s Il Cinema in Piazza film festival that Sony’s decision to stop manufacturing physical game discs by 2028 makes him "really sad" and raises worries about the future of game ownership. He noted that while digital purchases are stored on a player’s own hardware, a shift toward cloud-based streaming could remove that control.

"Since production is ending in 2028, this is about video games, but I grew up with physical media, so I find it really sad," Kojima said, adding that he has been buying Blu-rays and CDs as a personal archive.

He explained that streaming services operate like a tap that delivers content on demand, meaning users do not retain the data themselves. Kojima warned that if a service or its servers were discontinued, players could lose access to the games and movies they own.

"That’s how movies work on these platforms, right? You don’t download the data, you access it directly through a subscription. And the consequence of that is that you don’t actually possess the data yourself," he said.

Kojima’s remarks echo a 2021 social-media post in which he cautioned that digital libraries might become inaccessible due to political or technical changes, emphasizing that his concerns are not driven by greed. Sony confirmed the discontinuation of disc production but indicated that partners may still reprint discs for titles released before the cutoff date.