Sony's War on Discs Just Hit a Legal Wall in Mexico

Think about the last game you actually owned. Not a licence sitting on a server somewhere - a disc you could lend to a mate, resell when you were done, or buy second-hand for half the price. That whole part of gaming is quietly on the way out, and Sony is leading the charge.

The plan to stop manufacturing PlayStation discs by January 2028 has been rumbling for a while. What's new is that someone with actual legal teeth is pushing back. According to Eurogamer, lawmakers in Mexico - Federal Representative Iraís Reyes and Senator Luis Donaldo Colosio - are preparing a formal complaint to the country's National Antitrust Commission, arguing the move is anti-competitive and anti-consumer.

Why a monopoly argument isn't crazy

The logic is simple. Kill the disc and you kill the second-hand market, the rental shops, the lending, the ability to sell a game you didn't like. What's left is a storefront Sony fully controls, where the price is whatever Sony says it is on the day, and where you own nothing you can pass on. Call it convenience if you want, but it also happens to hand one company an awful lot of power over how you spend your money.

And here's the thing that bugs me: digital was sold to us as the cheaper, friction-free future. In practice, digital PlayStation prices in our region rarely undercut a physical copy - and physical still drops to proper bargain-bin money a few months after launch. Take the disc away and that floor disappears with it.

What it means for players here

For a lot of us, physical isn't nostalgia - it's economics. Buying used, splitting a game with friends, flipping something on a local classifieds site: that's how a 70-euro hobby stays affordable on regional wages. A digital-only PlayStation doesn't just change how you buy games, it changes whether you can afford as many.

A complaint in Mexico won't rewrite Sony's roadmap on its own. But it puts an uncomfortable question on the record: if getting rid of discs is genuinely better for players, why does it look so much better for Sony? I'd rather regulators ask that now than after the last disc rolls off the line.

Image: Evan-Amos / Public domain, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sony-PlayStation-3-2001A-wController-L.jpg