Era of disc production ending for video games

Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Sony is ending physical disc production for PlayStation in 2028. It's an end of an era says one video game store owner.

Joe Zullich of Fair Trade Games says not much has changed in recent years when it comes to video game production. "They've been doing essentially no physical for a while now, where you're having to have day one patches, and you get a key card, as opposed to ,buying the game physically at the store," says Zullich."If you go into stores like Target and Walmart, their video game selection is down to next to nothing, so to have something to hold on to and be able to play forever, you got to go older now."

Zullich says one video game store has made adjustments. "GameStop is a good example of how the main retailers are pivoting to more collectibles, and ythings that are referenced to the games, or it's like somewhere where you can go and talk to somebody about old games, and even with GameStop jumping on the retro bandwagon back into it again, kind of shows you like the real the collectors and the fans enjoy going back to the old stuff and having something they can physically own for their lifetime, " says Zullich.

His stores specializes in retro games. "Nintendo, Sega, PlayStation one through three, all those games, when you buy them, you have the physical copy, and it's yours forever. It's not like somebody can pull it back from you, or you know, any other company, or something doesn't expire because of, like, music rights. So that's where I've been. It's what is near and dear to my heart, and that's why I opened up the shop," says Zullich. "It's kind of sad to see it go, but it is, you know, keeping up with technology. You'd have to buy a hard drive to fix some of these games, so fitting on a disc is not really relevant anymore."

Zullich says unless you're savvy, downloading can be more challenging than plugging in discs. "Some people, it's like they'll set it up the night before, so the thing's installed by the time they wake up. But then it's also, I've had plenty of customers come in that have been able to plug, start something up, play within a minute or two, and then they go load a new game, it takes hours. Sometimes somebody told me, too, that their internet connection was a little slower, and it took two days to download an update for a game," notes Zullich.

He says it's the end of the end of an era for video games.