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.

I had the debate with myself like Sheldon, only in Thailand there weren’t Xbox’s so it was PS5 vs 4070. I ultimately went for the PlayStation, as I wanted to have something I could play on the couch in my down-time. This was during my editorial stint in the photography industry. Turning it on and hearing the chime made my house feel like a home. I really did not think my house was complete without a PlayStation inside it. This isn’t a Microsoft or PCMR fan hating on Sony. Yet, you can’t be betrayed by an enemy can you? Stellar Blade was a timed exclusive Final Fantasy was a timed exclusive, all my games were disc based and being in Thailand a mix of Japanese, Asian, Chinese and even European or US. Titles like Metal Gear Solid Delta and Silent Hill f were terribly hard to find. All this would be solvable if I went digital, digital does have benefits. But Why would I? Games were on Steam for 30% less on average not to mention the sales. That was a thorn that I identified long before this boycott. When the rampocalypse began I made the decision to upgrade my editing rigs (again, pre-Banshee) and once I saw what a 5080 could do, the choice was made for me. Why did I need to put up with Sony Interactive Entertainment’s ever increasing nonsense? And the answer was, I didn’t.

I’m learning Japanese just about far enough to say わたしわファンのPlayStationですか？ いいえ。But what that means is that I am starting to eye the catalogue of JRPGs I grew up with / missed out on, and they call PlayStation home. I think I would very much like one of those clear blue PS2 consoles that we never got in the UK, along with all the super cheap JRPG games because they are linguistically impenetrable to the Western market. I know I am far from being able to understand most, but it has drawn me to a niche or sub-culture of gaming I am quite happy to have found. Especially Pim at 4amlaundry who is an eternal source of jealousy (I haven’t been back since 2017, so live my Japanese game collecting dreams vicariously through him). What strikes me most is that JRPGs were the first genre to really put inclusivity front and centre, which seems to be the entire drive of this current crop of shit, sorry, titles. Yet they do not sacrifice anything to do it. I also have a love-hate relationship with JRPG games because a lot of them are quite YA/Childishly presented even when they have major themes underneath. This actually suits me well now as I can read about half as well as Yotsuba… and because they just take so much investment. Yet that isn’t really an argument I can make when I can polish off an anime series in a week, or put 160 hours into Forza Horizon 6 (one day I will have an FXX-K and won’t need to have the game). This may seem off-topic, but this, this is the PlayStation I remember. And outside of Super Potato and a few Hard-Off’s, it may not exist.

I was late to the SNES, my Dad was of the generation that thought my eyes would turn square if I stared at a TV for too long, and quite honestly if I had to stare at a 14” boob-tube now that I am on the wrong side of my thirties, they may well still. But somehow my Mum persuaded my Dad to get me a GameBoy, and yes, we are back in the days where there was no numerical following. I think, but I may not remember right, I spent so much on batteries that the pitch for a SNES was using the SuperBoy. So even from day-one cross-compatibility was there. Somehow that worked and I was the owner of a Super Nintendo, as we called them in the UK. I would fight my Mum on Street Fighter II and the stakes were high, if I won I could continue playing, if I lost I had to practise my Thai. Being an adult, I am pretty sure she would let me win until she wanted me to study. I’d play Mario Kart with my friend after football on Sunday, and in my own time I would explore titles like Warlock, Super Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts, Super Castlevania IV, and anything else with a gothic bent. I could never get into Final Fantasy, but enjoyed IV because Cecil (of course), and this is why when the PlayStation arrived, it was the natural evolution. It didn’t hold the Nintendo badge, but it held what I valued from my time on the SNES. Ridge Racer replaced Mario Kart, Tekken replaced Street Fighter (until Alpha), dark/gothic games were endless (even Bruce Willis had one!) and the JRPG lived on. I was one of the few who played them, and the ones I was exposed to aren’t the ones remembered fondly today: Tactics Ogre, Alundra, Jade Cocoon, Legend of the Dragoon. Then there were the games that defined my entire relationship with the medium: Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, Legacy of Kain, Gran Turismo (I actually bought a Captiva Blue EG6—the first prize-car—because of it), and probably far more that live in the recesses of my memory. Tomb Raider may be the biggest of them all, my Mum would joke that I fancied Lara (true, who didn’t), then Angelina (again true, who didn’t), but what I fancied more was her life. And if you look at what I did with my photography career, from exploring mountains, jungles, Khmer ruins, and just piecing together a time that came before, I am pretty satisfied that I got the parts of it I was envious of. The list is literally endless: Vagrant Story, Parasyte Eve, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Dino Crisis, Fear Effect, Syphon Filter, Akuji the Heartless, Shadow Man, Syndicate Wars…

I can’t remember what the case was with PlayStation 2 exactly but I remember buying games before we had the system, back when they came in those really dark blue cases with blue discs. I ended up with Kessen and Onimusha (I was exploring my Asian heritage at the time, having just read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but largely oblivious to the Sengoku-era). When I went to Gifu, my first-stop was Inabayama, now called Gifu-jo, setting of Onimusha and possibly the turning point of all of Japan. Without Gifu there was no East vs West, no East vs West, no Sekigahara. And of course no Oda Nobunaga, no three-unifiers. Again my life and work seems to overlap graciously. I also ended up with Smuggler’s Run, and Eternal Ring, with Primal and Tekken Tag a little later. Usually we went by the default of one-in-one-out, which worked fine for the SNES (until you take into account how much those games are worth today!), but the PlayStation was different, I didn’t need to sacrifice my games to move up. But then again, the leap in technology made the original look absurdly primitive. I think we landed on keeping a few, then trading-in the rest. it wasn’t even a money thing, it was just another of my Dad’s idiosyncrasies that likely benefitted a time closer to his own. But oh boy, when the console came was it something. But it wasn’t all roses, I remember seeing Dark Cloud in all the magazines but do you think I could find a copy in South Wales? Of all the consoles this was the one I remember most, my best friend lived around two miles away from me, which up to that point could have been on the moon but by the PS2 I was biking down to his and we would play anything from Baldur’s gate Dark alliance (his older brother had unlocked Drizzt!), Dynasty Warriors 3, Timesplitters (his old man was on PC and loved shooters, introduced us to Unreal, Quake, Red Faction, and even Soldier of Fortune—which he probably shouldn’t have), and Metal Gear Solid 2. In fact every few weeks we would sit down and try to finish the game in one-sitting, or one weekend. Eventually we ended up being able to do it on European Extreme. But that was just the first half of the consoles lifespan before the cases came in blue and the DVDs became white…

We had played Grand Theft Auto, and GTA III, but they weren’t really special to me. Not until Vice City, the game that sold a million Scarface posters. The 80s were less than 15 years ago at this point, and in he UK it crept well into the 90’s where I lived yet Vice City felt fantastical. This was pre-internet even if it was post-Concorde, so the States were as alien as anywhere but the music was ostensibly British. There were MR2’s on street corners and my friends mum drove a Prelude with pop-ups. it was both far-fetched yet mundane. I was a Punk kid, so New-Wave felt like an affront to my senses, even if Billy Joel was ultimately right “It’s all rock and roll,” yet Ozzy and the Crüe already lived in my CD collection, A Flock of Seagulls didn’t. Yet New-Wave was the soundtrack I edited my first zine “Simple Nothings” to, in my twenties. Would I have branched out into Jazz, or City-Pop, then J-Alt without Vice City? Or would I be the old guy in the corner with a Pantera T-Shirt complaining about how “Metal is dead” despite Opeth, Mastadon, Gojira and more. Final Fantasy X was one of the games that was legitimately a companion of my life. Not the first time I played it but later, when we moved back to Thailand and I barely spoke the language, couldn’t eat the food without an immediate play-date with the toilet, and was generally feeling miserable about being dragged away from my friends, my football, and whatever else constituted as important at the time. I sat with it for almost two years, between Final Fantasy X, Metal Gear Solid 2 (never liked 3), and The Lord of the Rings Extended Cut (on DVD, because I was a baller apparently). I had other games, I had other films, but that was my comfort-food, and it sunk in like a tattoo. They live inside me now.

The PSP was releasing in a September, a month before we left for Thailand and my Dad signed me up to get one day-and-date. I actually ended up working with Craig and Howard from the local GAME in Newport (eventually Cwmbran). In fact many years later Howard said something to me that stuck “Yeah, but you don’t just like the game. You love everything that goes into making it a game, so I understand when you want these special editions, it isn’t a waste of money for you.” After I splurged about three-hundred-and-fifty quid on a Titanfall statue. Yeah, that was after I needed Dad’s money. But even as a fifteen-year-old with disposable income from my weekend job, my Dad still needed to go in as I waited outside to buy Resident Evil 5 and the like. talking of Dad, at that point he had bought me a VAIO, and I was gaming on PC, NFS Carbon and Far Cry, so I was hardly doing badly, but he promised me that when we went back to the UK he would get me the new PS3 (JDM models were already in Thai shops, marked through the roof), and an LCD TV. That was like winning the lottery, but I think in that 18 months he saw how socially dependent I became with my PlayStation. Don’t take this for bad parenting or me being indoors or whatever, we’d go biking and shooting and he taught me how to ride a motorbike, we’d watch 80s flicks every weekend, but he was my only friend and not especially a good one considering he liked to spend the evenings with Bob, and Bert, and George trading war stories (them from ‘Nam, him from Cyprus) around pick-up trucks, an open fire, and John Denver. Which is the perfect life, just not when you are thirteen. And where do I talk about my mate having to smuggle OPSM2 of all things into school to show me God of War, scared it would be confiscated because of all the titties (thanks Jaffe)? Or modifying a Dodge Viper on Gran Turismo 4 only to have the AI race it because we couldn’t figure out how to make it turn? Or the lunch-breaks where we would try to get the Jecht-shot in Blitzball, or my favourite, every time we’d talk about ZOE the school’s darling (Zoe) would look at us like we just summoned her from hell. Or how I’d walk around in a three-quarter length leather jacket in June because of Dante? Ahh perhaps not that one…

The PSP was an odd one, in Thailand all I had was Midnight Club 3, Metal Gear AC!D and Lord of the Rings something or another, got it from Heathrow before we came. So I didn’t feel for it like I did the consoles, not until I joined the Army and had more money than sense, and surprisingly a lot of time to kill. But that’s a leap in this chronology and it also competed with the 360 which you could get a little external monitor for. Surprisingly I played JRPGs on both. So for me both the PSP and 360 come after the PS3 because that is when I was materially exposed to them. The PS3 is probably the most completely invested that I have ever been into a PlayStation console, my best-friend at the time had a 360, my childhood friend was on PC and deep into WoW. But we loved this, by having different consoles we had access to every single title. The console wars just did not exist for us. My other mate (enamoured by the titties in GoW no doubt) was the only person in the entirety of South Wales that had a PS3 built we didn’t feel like we were missing out, quite the opposite. it felt like we had something only we could experience, unless we decided to share that experience. Everyone in school had Gears of War, but no one aside us had Heavenly Sword. Then the biggest payoff eventually came; Metal Gear Solid 4. But there was a lot of games between the two. One of the first non-launch games I bought was Skate. Before Heavenly Sword actually. I think there was a real glimmer of what the future may be with that game, open world, looked gorgeous, integrated branding, soundtrack, and controls that we could never imagine until the demo discs dropped. This is where my true love of magazines came from, whilst in the early days I had magazines, they were almost as rare as a game, with some pocket money (and later weekend-job money) I’d buy every one. Edge, OPSM3, PSW, even Games Master sometimes. It was my little window into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.