In the latest episode of his YouTube program, renowned gaming journalist and leaker Jason Schreier dropped a rather heart-stinging assertion: PlayStation's abandonment of physical discs is not just a "logistics decision," but a landmark signal that the entire gaming market is shifting from competing for new growth to harvesting existing users.
Schreier believes that the gaming industry has completely bid farewell to its period of rapid growth and entered a "maturity phase." In the past, console users could grow by double-digit percentages, but now the player base for each generation of consoles has stabilized at around 100 to 120 million, with any growth being only in single digits.
"When new customers basically stop flowing in, big companies must change their game—from poaching heads to squeezing every last dollar out of existing users." Schreier uses this logic to connect all of Sony's recent "shady moves": shifting to digital distribution (higher profits, saving on logistics costs), raising PS Plus subscription prices, heavily betting on live-service games, and recently "cooling down" their PC porting strategy.
He cited a recent statement by Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki as evidence: "PS5 has sold over 90 million units, and the company will no longer aggressively pursue hardware sales growth, but instead focus on generating stable revenue from its 125 million monthly active users."
Circana analyst Matt Piscatella also expressed a similar view: "The next moves by big companies shouldn't be a surprise to those who have been following the market—all strategies will point towards extracting more from existing users."
Schreier concluded that this will mean for ordinary players: subscription fees will continue to rise, microtransaction mechanisms will become increasingly aggressive, and physical copies will gradually disappear. "The path of relying on new player growth has reached its end; next, big companies will only figure out how to make more money from those already in the pit."
What do you think about this? Do you plan to stick with PlayStation? Feel free to discuss in the comments section.