The Sony Boycott

By David Roberts, Creative Director

It is time that I put out my thoughts on Sony, and the recent announcement that they will be ending physical game support from January 2028. To get the obvious out of the way first, there is no way in hell that the next PlayStation will ship with disc support if Sony does not natively support it. It takes a serious amount of cope to think that it will continue through third-party support. However, what I have observed is that there is an overarching counter-narrative that truly believes that they can change Sony’s mind on the decision. Many people are boycotting the system for August of 2026, some a single week, and others a single month. But still the narrative is an eventual return to supporting the ecosystem. This article is not that. PlayStation has not been PlayStation for a very very long time now, over a decade. Just like any relationship, it isn’t always meant to last forever. PlayStation has changed, and I haven’t. I just so happened to have said goodbye to them already.

I recently wrote an article titled “Death of the Hero” and I was very tempted to call this “Death of the Video Game Company” but this really is about the boycott, and how redundant that stance is. I would argue that a traditional video game company no longer exists between the big-five — Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Valve and Epic — but that they are all conglomerates that lean into distribution, marketing, media, or tech. We are long past the days where people were in it for the love of the game. Even Nintendo, which is the purest of them in intent, is a media house for interactive entertainment. No one expects Nintendo to be the company that put out the Super Nintendo or GameCube. Because they aren’t. Just as Sony is not the company that brought us the PlayStation, or The Third Place, directed by the singular entity that was David Lynch.

Which brings me onto the next point, they no longer nurture culture. A kid doesn’t wake up one day with the dying need to own a PlayStation, but how can they ever be attracted the way we were when the companies have offloaded the responsibility to YouTubers and Twitch Streamers? Could you imagine something like The Bouncer existing today? Again we find false nomenclature, they use the term ecosystem, but where is this ecosystem? Bandai Namco supports Gundam more thoroughly than Sony supports PlayStation. For reference the current estimated worth of PlayStation as a brand is 50BN, and Gundam 1.5BN. though both pale in comparison to Pokémon, at approx. 113BN. Valve and Epic are anomalous in that they seem to extract value from aspiring developers, rather than audiences themselves, and quite frankly I need a crystal ball to figure what is going on in Seattle. Though if I had to guess, Microsoft are treating Xbox like a builder preparing to flip a quick reno.

If we expand the net, then things do end up looking a little more promising. From the outside, at least. Capcom very much reminds me of Tokyo, in the fact that it is one of the indisputably largest publishers when it comes to raw IP and potential. But just like Tokyo is a collection of smaller distinct neighbourhoods, Capcom doesn’t resemble a monolithic homogenised corporation, more like a patchwork of smaller AA studios. SEGA and Bandai Namco on the other hand, are aggressively flirting with the idea but seem to at least realise they are heavily dependent on a backbone of legacy IP, be it Yakuza and Persona, or Tales and Tekken, often using the success of those core franchises to financially or technically influence the wider stable. I don’t think there is a Western equivalent that Microsoft hasn’t already purchased… perhaps Focus, but it would take a major capital injection for them to become competitive. Ubisoft and EA are something else entirely, and CDPR is closer to Epic than its nearest competitor. Square Enix has seemingly learned for the mistakes of years past, and is closer to Capcom in both structure and output. I also think that if Xbox really is going to hit the open market, as I suspect, the two legitimate contenders would be Amazon and Tencent; both of which would not surprise me if they were to get into the hardware (cloud-ware?) arms-race.

I think that Sony’s interactions with Bandai Namco — be it diversifying portfolio interest in a wider-stack corporation, or attempting to court timed exclusivity — or its relationship (now lack thereof) with Square Enix acts as a major mile-marker for the journey PlayStation is currently on. When a 6BN corporation feels like it is carrying the 50BN, when the software sees the hardware relationship as detrimental to sales, it really is a forecast we should listen to. And how am I supposed to translate the hot and then cold signals as to Sony’s relationship with Bandai? It treats Bloodborne like the black sheep of the family, then shutters Bluepoint after the fantastic console-selling remake of Demon’s Souls (I know not Bandai, but still FromSoft originally) so what Sony? You want to influence FromSoft? I don’t think you are investing in Bandai for Tekken or Tales… despite once having monopoly over those IP’s as well.

Now we have mapped out the lay of the land, back to Sony. I was going to say that like many my age, we grew up with the PlayStation, then I realized we are literally called “The PlayStation Generation.” Which actually puts a very damning light on things. This is not turning your back on a consumer demographic, but an entire generation. Yet as I have learned, you can’t force anyone to be the person they are not, no matter how much you love them. This goes for brands too. I don’t own any PlayStation devices anymore, I didn’t need to sell my PS5, I was not in need of space or money but just looking at it angered me. That is how far the relationship fell. After Ghost of Yotei, I was done, I was out. Fool me once, shame on me but fool me twice and shame on you. I gave them the benefit of the doubt with God of War Ragnarok, but as I detail in “Death of the Hero” there is a very clear pattern when it comes to Sony’s first-party offerings of late. But I knew, and I still know, that asking for change is naïve. When someone tells you who they are, or shows you, believe them.

As I said, this has been decades in the making, long before Ragnarok graced my disc-tray. From Amy Hennig being pushed out on Uncharted 4, to the abandonment of male-coded IP such as Resistance and Killzone. People forget the state The Last of Us launched in, with inoperable save system, long before Part II and the bastardization of that franchise. Sony’s arguably strongest and unarguably most unique studio, Team Ico, disbanded after director Ueda Fumito-sama explicitly sought independence in 2011! Yoshida Shuhei-sama who undoubtably played a great role in creating the identity of PlayStation — with Producer credits as far back as Gran Turismo, Crash Bandicoot and Ape Escape — was forced into “Indie” via ultimatum in 2019, and finally forced out of the company entirely. For reference this is the man responsible for the “How to Share Games” ad. Kicked from the company he helped build and steer. Worst of all Hirai Kazuo-Sama left Sony in 2019, suspiciously the same year that Yoshida Shuhei-sama was forced from his position as President of SIE. Even the father of PlayStation,Kutaragi Ken-sama, is no longer at Sony, and whose last hands-on project was PS3 and Cell. For those of you who don’t know, he is the Japanese Steve Jobs, and that is being very kind to Steve Jobs. All in all, you have no chance of making a dent with a boycott, those who would have responded to appeal are no longer there.

Now, I’m not a stone-cold killer. I do lament what we have lost, and this closing act will be a little of my story; part eulogy and part proof that Banshee Interactive is captained by someone vested in the medium. There is a lot to talk about when it comes to PlayStation, and ebven more when it comes to the Sony umbrella but before I speak about the era that captivated myself personally (PlayStation to PSP/PS3), I want to talk about the slow decline and pivot. I’ll say it up front, I have owned every PlayStation console bar the PS5 Pro, so that’s the PlayStation, PSOne, PS2, PS3, PS4, PS4 Pro, and PS5 (twice!). With most purchased either launch window or day-and-date. I’ve even owned the PSP and Vita, which I bought on my birthday once, and a second whilst travelling in Nagoya, Japan when they wouldn’t sell me a Switch. I will go into this in depth, as I have a lot of sentiment for every single console for one reason or another, but now I own no PlayStations. I still have my Switch OLED, and I have two PC’s, my 14900K/5080 workstation which is hooked up to a 240Hz 4K OLED panel, and a 14700/5070 system that I have in the living room with a 65” 120Hz OLED, as a dedicated gaming system. So this is the point of view that I am looking at Sony from, and it isn’t a favourable angle for them. But this change didn’t happen overnight, one of the first personal “treat” purchases for myself after moving to Thailand was a PS5 with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Final Fantasy XVI, Stellar Blade, and God of War Ragnarök. Luckily I decided to play Stellar Blade and Final Fantasy XVI first, so enjoyed my initial time back with the console even though the launch window in the UK really did little to impress me.

As I was saying, I didn’t fall out of love overnight, but the seeds of dissent were planted as far back as the PS4. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy the PS4 generation, Call of Duty WWII, Resident Evil VII, Resident Evil 2 Remake, all stand-out experiences that I played on that console, but already you should see a pattern here. But on team green? Forza, Gears, Halo MC Collection, it seemed like the ecosystem was really maturing despite the “always on” debacle. During launch window my time was taken by Forza Motorsport 5, Dead Rising 3 and Ryse: Son of Rome whilst the PS4 had NFS Rivals and Assassins Creed Black Flag, again a pattern arises. Despite how much of a hidden gem it has become even Killzone: Shadowfall was not enough to pull me off Battlefield 4, and Xbox Live. This shifted through the generation, especially as the Pro/Series X surfaced and the original hardware was feeling very long in the tooth but even then the novelty of playing Skyrim again but in 4K only lasted so long. With the disastrous launch of the PS5 (in terms of distribution) it left me with my Series X long before I ended up with a console, and with playing Cyberpunk 2077 on the PS4 Pro before that. If there was a seventh trumpet, CDPR’s 2077 surely heralded it. Oddly the Series X was defined by third-party titles and next-gen updates, whilst conversely I found myself waiting for my allocation and thinking about Deathloop, Ratchet and Clank, and Returnal. Whilst Ratchet was a highlight, the stable left me unimpressed, with Ghostwire Tokyo possibly the only title of note but I don’t know if it was welcome like water in the desert, or actually quenching. The monolithic Elden Ring I chose to play on Series X, which speaks volumes. By then I had upgraded to OLED, even if it was only a 60Hz panel, and honestly that was the bigger jump in fidelity than any console could give.