Although he is saddened by Sony’s decision, he believes the real nightmare is something else entirely.

Hideo Kojima, the visionary game designer known primarily as the creator of Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding, recently shared his thoughts on Sony’s decision to stop producing PlayStation discs in January 2028. Kojima, a huge movie fan, attended the annual Il Cinema in Piazza film festival in Rome as a guest and responded to the question with his usual thoughtfulness and keen insight. Understandably, he is saddened by this decision, but he also pointed out that it is the “first step” in the transition to digital. He finds cloud gaming even more daunting because it would mean consumers would lose complete control over their data.

“Since production is ending in 2028, this is about video games. But I grew up with physical media, so I find it really sad. Currently, I’ve been buying a lot of Blu-rays and CDs. The situation is different for games because they are downloaded to the hard drive. That means the game data remains on your hardware. However, if things shift to streaming in the future, that won’t be the case anymore. With streaming subscription services like Netflix or Amazon, there is a server somewhere, and you essentially just have the right to access the data. That’s how movies work on these platforms, right? You don’t download the data; you access it directly through your subscription. The consequence is that you don’t actually possess the data.

Some companies own these servers and allow you to access them for a monthly fee. However, given the involvement of nations, politics, and various ways of thinking, it’s important to consider the possibility that a change could result in the data being stopped from being distributed. If that happens, you won’t be able to watch or play your favorite movies and games. That is what is frightening. What is happening to video games in 2028 could also happen to movies. “I’d like everyone to keep that in mind,” said Kojima.

Kojima is right that cloud licensing is even worse from consumers’ perspectives. Undeniably, movies and TV series are far ahead of video games in the shift to the cloud. Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and numerous other streaming services dominate the home entertainment market. So far, however, cloud gaming hasn’t managed to gain similar traction. Interestingly, despite his historically close ties to Sony, Kojima didn’t hesitate to criticize this move. After leaving Konami, Sony helped him relaunch Kojima Productions and granted him access to Guerrilla’s Decima Engine for Death Stranding. Furthermore, although he is currently working on OD, a horror game funded by Xbox, Kojima has already signed on to develop a new PlayStation-exclusive game: the Metal Gear-inspired Physint.

This isn’t surprising to those who know Kojima is an independent thinker. However, even his opinion won’t be enough to convince Sony, as the disc manufacturing plants are already being reassigned to other tasks.

Source: WCCFTech