GTA 6 is now the most pre-ordered game ever on both the PlayStation Store and the Microsoft Store, according to Sony and Microsoft. Sony announced the record in a PlayStation Blog post that opened PS5 pre-loading nine days before the November 19 launch, pointing to "unprecedented demand" for the early start. Xbox then called it "the most pre-ordered title of all time on the Microsoft Store" while confirming that GTA 6 will stream to Xbox One through Cloud Gaming. Neither company shared actual numbers, however.

Sensor Tower's tracker fills some of that gap. As of November 10, the firm estimates 9.69 million pre-orders worth about $942 million net of returns, up from 7.71 million a week earlier and 6.45 million in late October. PlayStation holds roughly 75% of that with 7.23 million copies and $703 million, while Xbox sits at 2.46 million copies and $239 million. That averages out to around $97 per copy, which fits with most buyers going for the $100 Ultimate Edition. If accurate, GTA 6 has passed the 8 million pre-orders CD Projekt reported for Cyberpunk 2077 in 2020. The comparison isn't quite like-for-like, though, since Cyberpunk also launched on PC and likely counted physical copies, while Sensor Tower seems to track digital console orders only.

Sony is adding built-in storage to a new PlayStation Portal model for Japan and South Korea, though it hasn't said how much storage it has or what it will be used for. The PlayStation Portal Player Midnight Black goes on sale December 10 for ¥39,980 in Japan and ₩378,000 in South Korea, the same price the current model sells for after this year's price hikes. Preorders open November 13, and each unit ships with one month of PlayStation Plus Premium. Like the Japan-only Midnight Black PS5, both versions are locked to the local language and only work with PlayStation accounts registered in that country. Sony's Japanese post only says the storage is there for future features, with details to follow once those are decided.

Interestingly, the Korean post calls it expanded internal storage instead of new storage, which makes sense since the Portal needs some flash just to run its OS. The "Remote" part of the name is also gone, so the device is now simply the PlayStation Portal Player, as it can stream games from the cloud without a PS5 these days. Everything else carries over, including the 8-inch 1080p 60 FPS LCD, haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, and 3D Audio. That also means no OLED panel, which leaker KeplerL2 claimed back in January would come with a refreshed Portal sometime in 2026. Offline play or local downloads would be the obvious guess for the storage, though Sony hasn't confirmed anything along those lines. There's also no word on a wider release, so buyers elsewhere shouldn't hold out for this model just yet.

Physical copies still make up close to a third of the console games people actually own, according to a new Newzoo white paper produced with support from G2A. The firm surveyed 6,166 "premium gamers" across the US, UK, Germany, Poland, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia in August, defined as players aged 18 to 55 who game at least monthly on PC or a current-gen console and bought or subscribed to at least one AA or AAA title in the past year. Of the console games these respondents paid for outright, 30.4% were physical. That share drops to 11% across everything they play, since free-to-play and subscription titles together account for more than half of it.

Apparently, the most common reason for buying physical is being able to play without a stable internet connection, followed by the feeling of owning something tangible and saving storage space. That last one carries a bit more weight now that game download sizes have ballooned, with GTA 6 needing up to 212 GB on its own. Reselling, trading, or lending games came in fourth, and that is something digital console purchases still largely don't allow. PC is a different story, with PC-only players reporting just 6% physical ownership, although GOG would like to change that.

EA has put 25 classic PC games on Steam with a very interesting story behind them. Seven of them are restored Anniversary Editions of Road Rash and six Wing Commander titles. The other 18, which include Theme Hospital, Strike Commander, both Crusader games, and eleven Ultima games, are on Steam for the first time, according to EA. The Anniversary Editions cost $9.99 and the rest go for $4.99, and Steam currently has them at 50% off until November 19. EA returned to Steam back in 2020 and has been slowly adding older classics since.

Apparently, it all started in March 2022, when EA producer Jim Vessella found a storage room at EA's Redwood Shores campus with nearly 20,000 old tapes, film reels, and CD-ROMs, including the master recordings for Wing Commander and Road Rash. By April 2026, around 6,000 had been digitized, and EA says that helped restore over 1,500 cutscenes. Much of the work happened on personal time, with Vessella using lunch breaks and evenings and Brian Barnes spending his weekends on Road Rash, the same pair that helped make the Command & Conquer source code public last year. Fan modders also played a big part, as the Wing Commander releases ship with community patches, and GOG's engineers built the Prophecy edition.

Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake launches on Switch 2 today, but it looks like PC users got there first. A dump of the game was already making the rounds before launch, which Brazilian account Senhor Linguica Pro confirmed on X while noting that no emulator could run it properly at the time. That didn't last long. Footage now shows the remake running on PC through Lichii, a Switch 2 emulator that reportedly traces its roots back to Yuzu, the Switch emulator Nintendo took to court in 2024.

Running is a generous word, though. Users report white or washed-out visuals, gameplay scenes where only the HUD shows up, and terrain poking through objects, while some setups can't even get past the title screen. Gameplay clips show the frame rate swinging anywhere between 20 and 60 FPS, with regular stutters along the way. For comparison, Digital Foundry's look at the Nintendo Direct footage showed the remake running at 1080p and 60 FPS on Switch 2, so the emulator still has a long way to go. The emulator can load the dumped files now, but that doesn't mean other Switch 2 games will work, and it's going to take a lot more fixes before anyone can play this one properly.

Rockstar has moved GTA 6's pre-load up by two days. According to an updated Newswire post and support page, digital pre-orders can now start downloading on November 10, instead of the November 12 date announced back in June. The exact timing depends on the console. On PlayStation 5, the pre-load unlocks at midnight local time in the user's respective time zone. Xbox Series X|S gets a single global unlock at 12 a.m. GMT, which works out to 7 PM ET or 4 PM PT on November 9 for players in North America, while the full launch is still set for November 19.

Rockstar also put a number on the file size for the first time, saying the pre-load will need "up to 212 GB of available space depending on your device." That's a touch above the 210 GB figure a dataminer pulled from the PlayStation Store backend last week, but it's safe to say it was an accurate leak. The "depending on your device" bit suggests the PS5 and Xbox builds won't be exactly the same size, though Rockstar didn't share a per-console breakdown. That does mean that on a launch PS5 with roughly 667 GB of usable storage, GTA 6 alone would eat close to a third of the drive.

Instagram is testing a new format called Features, which lets creators upload horizontal videos up to 90 minutes long. The test started on Monday with a small group of US creators, following an earlier trial in Brazil, and it's aimed squarely at podcasters, comedians, and other long-form creators who mostly publish on YouTube today. Instagram head Adam Mosseri and VP of Product Tessa Lyons announced it in a video. Plenty of creators already post Reels clips to promote full episodes hosted elsewhere, so Instagram now wants to host the full episode too. Reels can link straight to the full video, and Features will also be recommended on the Explore page.

While YouTube shares ad revenue with creators in its Partner Program, Instagram has no plans to do the same for Features, at least for now. An Instagram representative said the company is funding some creators directly, but that it's "too early to share a long-term monetization model." Lyons said established creators can bring their existing sponsorships and branded content along. Instagram already tried long-form video once with IGTV, which launched in 2018 and was shut down in 2022. This time, the TV seems to be a bigger part of the plan, as the Instagram for TV app, which debuted on Amazon Fire TV in December 2025, has now reached Apple TV in the US. There's no firm date for a wider rollout, and without a revenue share, it's hard to see many creators leaving YouTube anytime soon.

Auroch Digital, the studio behind Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun and Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! recently posted an announcement to its LinkedIn page, breaking the news that it would be laying off as much as 25% of its workforce due to "market conditions." However, shortly after the studio announced the layoffs, as covered by GameIndustry, the announcement post disappeared. The original post read:

Auroch Digital via GameIndustryOver the past year our colleagues have delivered amazing games like Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 and Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! to wonderful reception from our players. Despite that creative success, the same market conditions that have challenged so many of our fellow developers have now also affected us. Consequently, we have made the decision to restructure the studio to work through a turbulent and uncertain time in our industry.

EIZO Corporation (TSE: 6737) today announced the release of three new DuraVision touch panel monitors optimized for stylus-based input: the DuraVision FDF2182WT-AS (21.5-inch), FDF1983WT-AS (18.5-inch), and FDF1683WT-AS (15.6-inch). As derivative models of EIZO's established touch panel monitor lineup, the new products retain the core specifications and reliability of their respective base models while adding a dedicated active stylus for smooth digital writing.

As organizations continue transitioning from paper-based processes to digital workflows, many tasks across offices, healthcare facilities, manufacturing sites, and public service systems still depend on handwritten input. To support these workflows, the new monitors combine projected capacitive (PCAP) touch technology with a dedicated active stylus engineered for accurate, responsive pen input. Users can comfortably write, annotate, sign, and draw directly on the screen, bringing the precision and familiarity of pen-and-paper interaction to digital environments.

EA Sports FC 27 carries a PEGI 16 rating in Europe, a big jump for a series that has sat at PEGI 3 for years. The reason behind the change is Ultimate Team. PEGI's breakdown for the game lists its purchase options, including FC Points, a season pass, and player packs, and those packs count as paid random items under PEGI's updated rules. Announced in March and applied to newly submitted games since June, the rules make PEGI 16 the default for any game with loot boxes, with PEGI 18 possible in some cases. Of course, EA has a long history with this topic, having once defended loot boxes as "surprise mechanics".

FC 27 isn't the only game affected, either. PEGI is now rerating existing digital-only games rated 3, 7, or 12 that sell paid random items, with changes rolling out through the rest of October. Pokémon Go, Pokémon TCG Pocket, Mario Kart Tour, and Zenless Zone Zero have reportedly been bumped up already. The new criteria also cover time-limited offers (PEGI 12), daily quests and similar return rewards (PEGI 7), and NFTs or chat that can't be restricted (PEGI 18). PEGI says it followed the lead of Germany's USK, which made similar changes in 2023.

Since Sony announced that it would be ending physical media production for the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro, there has been much discussion about the value of physical games media in the modern gaming landscape. Some argue that physical media is invaluable for game preservation and access to content in some remote parts of the world, while others argue that its value is limited, because the physical media market share is small for most games, and it has limited preservation value, thanks to day-one patches. Alinea Analytics recently posted some data about physical media sales on PlayStation, putting more numbers to the impact of physical games media on PlayStation.

Interestingly, despite the relatively high physical sales split of some games, like Resident Evil Requiem, with disc sales accounting for 30.2% of its sales, and Marvel's Wolverine, whose disc sales came to 32.3% of its total sales revenue, the total physical game sales revenue for games released in 2026 on PlayStation 5 and PS4 amounted to $655 million, which is less than 20% of sales revenue for the year. As the analytics firm explains, that revenue split itself is skewed by digital-only releases and pre-order bonuses, which are all digital sales. The data itself seems to tell a story of a split player base: those who buy first-party, single-player, narrative-driven games tend to skew more towards physical media, while sports and multiplayer gamers tend to buy digital more often.

GTA 6 has now racked up an estimated 6.45 million digital pre-orders worldwide, worth roughly $630 million net of returns, according to the latest weekly update from Sensor Tower's sales tracker. PlayStation accounts for 74% of the total, or about 4.80 million copies and $468 million, while Xbox sits at 1.66 million copies and $162 million. The tracker's October 13 figures had GTA 6 at 6.08 million pre-orders and $594 million, so around 370,000 more people locked in their copy in about a week. In the US, Sensor Tower says GTA 6's digital pre-orders are 148% ahead of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022) at the same point before launch, the best performer among the big releases it tracked over the past six years.

Of course, these are third-party estimates covering digital copies only, and Take-Two hasn't confirmed any figures. CEO Strauss Zelnick did say in August that pre-orders were skewing toward the $100 Ultimate Edition, and Sensor Tower now says the vast majority of buyers went for that version. PlayStation has led since tracking began in June, and in late August Sensor Tower had it at about 77% of 4.86 million pre-orders. The firm tweaked its estimation model on October 5, however, so those older numbers aren't a perfect like-for-like comparison. Xbox's smaller share probably isn't helped by US Xbox hardware sales sitting at an all-time low this year. GTA 6 launches on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, so expect these numbers to keep climbing.

Colorful has just released its latest overclocking motherboard, the X870E Ultra-S V14, a new E-ATX unit with 16+2+1 power phases, five M.2 slots, and plenty of high-speed I/O. The new motherboard, as shared by IT Home, is priced at 1,899 CNY, which comes out to around $284 at the time of writing, although it only seems to be available in China for the time being. The iGame X870E Ultra-S V14 is explicitly marketed to overclockers on AMD's AM5 platform, bearing XMP/EXPO memory overclocking and asynchronous BCLK CPU overclocking, a digital debug display, EZ Debug diagnosis, and easily accessible rear I/O buttons for both clear CMOS and BIOS updates.

The motherboard also features Wi-Fi 7 and 5 GbE networking built-in, alongside expansive rear I/O that includes: 4× USB Type-A 5 Gbps, 3× USB Type-A 10 Gbps, 2× USB Type-A 2.0, 2× USB4 40 Gbps, and both 3.5 mm line in/out ports and SPDIF out for audio. Colorful claims that its 16+2+1 VRMs are capable of 80 A, and the VRMs are covered by beefy aluminium heat sinks. It also has five M.2 slots for expanded storage, each with its own heat sink. The Colorful iGame X870E Ultra-S V14 is available on JD.com at the time of writing.

Microsoft has posted a job listing for an "Xbox Games Supply Strategist," and the role revolves entirely around physical games. The full-time, Redmond-based position went live on October 14 and was spotted by users on X a few days later. The new hire will join the Xbox Supply Chain team to coordinate the launch of physical Xbox games "across all platforms," along with global supply planning, inventory, and retail sales. Oddly enough, the listing never mentions discs. The timing is interesting regardless. Sony confirmed in July that it will stop producing discs for new PlayStation games from January 2028, and its lawyers have since argued that digital game ownership "is not plausible." On the other hand, Microsoft's signals have been more mixed.

Team Green's Disc-to-Digital program lets owners of supported Xbox One and Series X discs claim a digital license, which many read as groundwork for a discless Project Helix, yet Microsoft later asked Insiders whether its next-gen console should install games from physical discs. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma also told the BBC in August that she wants players to have a choice between physical and digital, without committing to anything for Helix. Still, a job listing isn't a confirmed hardware roadmap. "Across all platforms" could simply cover Xbox-published games that ship physically on PlayStation and Nintendo consoles, and it says nothing about a disc drive on Helix. It looks like boxed Xbox games will stick around a while longer in some form, but anyone hoping for a disc drive on Helix should wait for Microsoft to confirm it.

U.S. Representative Ritchie Torres (D-NY) has announced plans to introduce the "Power To The Players Act," a federal bill that would direct the FTC to write rules making a game purchase actual ownership rather than a revocable license. Games that rely on online servers would also need to offer an offline mode before those servers are switched off, and players would keep the right to transfer the games they buy. The bill hasn't been formally introduced yet, so there's no bill text, and Torres hasn't confirmed any cosponsors. Torres pointed to NBA 2K25 as the example. The game sold for $69.99, or $99.99 for the All-Star Edition, and it leaves digital storefronts on October 30, with online servers shutting down at the end of the year, roughly two years after launch. Here's how Torres put it:

When you pay for a game, you should own it. Consumers must have the right to own, the right to play, and the right to transfer the games they buy. A game that can be taken away the moment a company pulls the plug is not a purchase. It is a rental disguised as a sale. Families in the Bronx and across the country save up to buy these games, and they deserve better than a license that can vanish at any time. The Power To The Players Act ensures consumers own what they buy and can keep playing long after a company moves on.

Sony Electronics Inc. today announced new premium Walkman digital media players - NW-WM1ZM3, NW-WM1AM3, and NW-ZX900. Designed for music enthusiasts and audiophiles, the new Walkman models are engineered to deliver exceptional sound and incorporate a wealth of premium audio components throughout their design.

The NW-WM1ZM3 and NW-WM1AM3 bring together Sony's most advanced audio technologies, including key components made from oxygen-free copper, for uncompromising sound quality. The WM1 Series is designed to convey the artist's original intent, delivering detailed, high-resolution sound. Developed in pursuit of exceptional sound quality, it captures subtle nuances throughout a performance, while maintaining clarity, scale, and dynamics at higher volumes.

New sales data shared by The Game Business suggests physical PS5 games still have plenty of buyers. According to Ampere Analysis, 35% of worldwide sales of Marvel's Wolverine in September came from boxed copies. Ampere estimates the game sold around 2.16 million copies in its launch month, which would put physical sales at roughly 756,000. Interestingly, Europe leaned even harder towards discs, with GSD data showing 51% of sales there coming from the boxed version. The split varies a lot by country, though. Two thirds of Wolverine's UK sales were digital, while in France more than two thirds were physical. Wolverine wasn't alone either, as over 45% of Silent Hill: Townfall sales were boxed, while The Blood of Dawnwalker on PS5 and Onimusha came in at 36% and 30%, respectively.

These numbers are interesting because Sony plans to stop producing discs for new PlayStation games from January 2028, and earlier data from Alinea Analytics pointed in a similar direction for Sony's biggest exclusives. Of course, these are estimates, and actual data available to Sony may be different. Moreover, these patterns can be affected heavily by factors such as pricing and availability. There have also been rumors that Sony could push its digital-only plans back, while Microsoft is asking Xbox Insiders whether its next console should support discs. For now, though, Sony's own messaging still points to a January 2028 cutoff.

Sony has announced a Midnight Black version of its Japan-only PS5 Digital Edition through the Japanese PlayStation Blog, and it goes on sale on November 19 for ¥55,000 (roughly $350) including tax. That's the same day GTA 6 launches, and Sony mentions the game right alongside the console in its announcement. Pre-orders open on October 20 at PlayStation retailers and online stores in Japan. The new model, CFI-2200B02S, comes with the same catch as the white Japan-only version from last November: the system language is locked to Japanese, and the console only works with PlayStation accounts registered to Japan. Other than that, it's a regular PS5 Digital Edition with an 825 GB SSD. A matching Midnight Black disc drive also launches on November 19 for ¥11,980 (about $76).

The pricing is the more interesting part. When Sony raised PS5 prices worldwide in April, the Japan-only model stayed at ¥55,000 (~$350), while the standard Digital Edition in Japan jumped to ¥89,980 (~$570). In the US, the Digital Edition now sells for $599.99, so the region lock seems to be there mostly to stop these units from being exported. Sony also used the announcement to repeat that new PlayStation games will be digital only from January 2028. That's a slightly awkward message to pair with a brand-new disc drive, especially since physical copies still bring in a sizeable share of revenue for its biggest exclusives. There's no word about a release outside Japan, and with US console prices sitting at record highs, it's reasonable to expect that this cheaper black PS5 stays a Japan-only affair.

Nintendo isn't following Sony toward a digital-only future, at least for now. Videocardz reports that Bill van Zyll, Nintendo's Vice President and General Manager for Latin America, said the company has no plans to drop physical games on the Switch 2. He spoke to Brazilian YouTube channel Coelho no Japão at Brasil Game Show (BGS) 2026, telling them that Nintendo goes by what customers prefer and that the Switch 2 supports both physical and digital releases. His exact words were: "There's no plans to ditch physical. We know how much the fans like it as well." Apparently, physical games are especially popular in Latin America, Brazil included.

Nintendo's clarification is important, as Sony, on the other hand, confirmed in July that disc production for new PlayStation games will end in January 2028, although games released before then won't be affected. That decision drew plenty of backlash, and data from Alinea Analytics later showed discs still bring in a sizeable share of revenue for PlayStation's biggest exclusives. Nintendo's own numbers point toward digital dominance too, with 61.5% of its software sales coming from digital in the April to June quarter. The company has also been pricing digital Switch 2 exclusives lower than their physical versions since May. Of course, plans can change, though for the foreseeable future, cartridges seem safe on the Switch 2.

The notorious leaker known as Cyberleek is now threatening to release what is claimed to be a playable build of GTA 6 ahead of the game's November 19 launch. According to a post on the leaker's own website, the build supposedly includes the full story mode, playable through to the end credits. The threat comes with two conditions. The build would apparently go out if a meme coin tied to the leaker reaches a $30 million market cap, and the coin reportedly sits roughly $26 million short of that mark. The post also offers Take-Two a way to avoid the release, stating: "Take-Two gets one way out: physical disks and a public apology."

That is a reference to GTA 6 launching without a disc, as boxed copies are set to ship with a download code. Neither Take-Two nor Rockstar appears to have responded publicly so far, but Rockstar did acknowledge the leaks in late August. Tying the threat to a coin's market cap also gives the post an obvious financial angle, since the attention alone could move the price, so the claim is probably best treated with caution. The claim has not been independently verified, there is no date attached to it, and it may well turn out to be a bluff. Readers are also advised to stay away from the leaker's site and from any files that claim to be the full GTA 6 build, as there is no way to tell what they actually contain.

Denuvo anti-tamper protection has recently been struggling with a surge of game cracks appearing almost immediately after, and sometimes even before, the launch of the latest AAA games. In extreme cases, such as with Silent Hill: Townfall, cracks have appeared days before the official release during the pre-release period. However, this trend seems to be changing. With the release of Star Wars: Galactic Racer, the game is reportedly resisting a classical hypervisor-based workaround that was previously used to bypass the company's anti-piracy measures in many new game titles. As readers might recall, this racing game launched on October 6, but as of today, no successful bypass using the established method has emerged.

The hypervisor workaround takes advantage of virtualization technology that operates below Windows, allowing it to interfere with how a protected game detects certain system features without directly removing Denuvo's checks from its executable. Its relative simplicity helped make it a practical alternative to more labor-intensive cracking methods, with reports attributing successful bypasses across more than 60 games to this approach. The latest development suggests that the technique may no longer work as reliably against newer implementations of Denuvo.

Microsoft has confirmed that Battlefield 6 is joining Xbox Game Pass on October 13, the same day EA and Battlefield Studios kick off Season 5. The shooter will be playable on Xbox Series X|S, PC, and cloud for Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers. The game launched on October 10, 2025, so it took just over a year to get here. Season 5 moves the fight to Las Vegas with three new maps planned, two of which, Vegas Strip and an Area 51 map, are available on day one. EA is also adding six weapons, two vehicles, Platoons, and a Rapid Royale mode for REDSEC, while the long-requested server browser arrives later in the season.

The timing is interesting, to say the least. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 launches on October 23 for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2, with campaign early access opening on October 16 for digital pre-orders. Contrary to what one might expect from a Microsoft-owned franchise, Modern Warfare 4 will not be on Game Pass at launch. Microsoft dropped day-one Call of Duty access in April, when it cut Game Pass Ultimate to $22.99 and PC Game Pass to $13.99 per month, and new entries now arrive about a year after release. That leaves subscribers with EA's year-old shooter at no extra cost on one side and a $69.99 Call of Duty on the other. It's reasonable to expect a bump in Battlefield 6 player numbers, though it's unclear how much of that will last once Modern Warfare 4's multiplayer goes live.

Forza Horizon 6 will apparently reach the PlayStation 5 on January 26, 2027, according to billbil-kun, the generally reliable leaker at Dealabs. That would put the port a little over eight months behind the Xbox Series X|S and PC versions, which launched on May 19, and it would miss the 2026 window that Microsoft and Playground Games have been promising since January. The game is also said to be getting a physical disc release on the same day as the digital version. That is a change from Forza Horizon 5, which arrived on PS5 in April 2025 as a digital-only title. Pricing is reportedly set at €69.99 in Europe and £59.99 in the UK, the same as the Xbox version, and billbil-kun expects the US price to land at $69.99.

An official announcement is expected as early as this week, with pre-orders opening shortly after. Of course, neither Microsoft nor Playground Games has confirmed any of this. In early September, the studio's own blog still said the PS5 version would be out "later this year". The Verge's Tom Warren had been saying otherwise since late August, and he later reported that the port was being pushed to early 2027, apparently to coincide with the game's first expansion. It looks like he had it right. PS5 owners should keep an eye out for the official launch date and pre-order details.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is getting a physical edition, and it seems director Naoki Hamaguchi had to argue for it. He told Radio Times that he pushed Square Enix for a boxed release, while admitting the product lineup is the publishing team's call. On PS5 and Xbox Series X, the disc reportedly works as a key disc that holds the opening and downloads the rest, and the Switch 2 gets a game-key card. The game launches on April 8, 2027. Here's what Hamaguchi said:

In this day and age, as we've been talking about, there's a lot of pressure for disc-less editions, digital editions, and I used my position to put forth an argument for the physical version as much as possible. I completely understand there are those out there who may not really agree with that direction or approve of that direction. But I would just say that I hope you understand that I completely see where you're coming from, and that I did my best.

Rumors recently appeared about Sony potentially delaying its digital-only future due to pressure from Microsoft's Xbox Helix, although they were promptly shot down by industry insiders and frequent leakers who said that Sony was dead-set on killing its physical media production—despite data suggesting a large chunk of the gaming audience still relies on physical media. Following this, however, Kenzo Saruhashi, CEO of long-time JPG developer who depends on physical media, suggested in an interview with Kotaku that there may still be hope for physical media at Sony.

Speaking for myself, I know that a big part of our business model, particularly with NISA, is producing our physical limited editions and that's an important part of our business and we, for our part, intend to continue making those physical editions and delivering the exceptional quality that our customers are expecting of us... In our discussions with Sony so far, I think that they're hearing a lot of the feedback from customers and so while that may be one destination that we arrive at, it's possible that the discussion may change in the future, so we'll have to see what happens, what comes of it