The Death Of Physical Media

01 Sep, 2026

I've struggled with writing this next blog post because I knew I would have to do the whole "It is 2026 and everything about the video games industry is horrible" thing. While I've gotten into it a few times before, it's really unavoidable at this point. You're likely familiar with the fact that Sony announced that they are discontinuing physical games for PlayStation 5 by January 2028, a decision they have stuck with despite severe backlash, as most people are recognizing this for what it is, an attack on consumer rights.

(Sony is discontinuing physical media for PlayStation 5. Image credit Kotaku)

This comes both after and amongst a long string of other horrible things happening in the game industry:

Microsoft's complicity with the genocide in Gaza has lead to all Xbox products being a priority boycott target for BDS. Xbox also recently announced they are cutting 3,200 jobs and divesting from 5 studios. Steam, the primary digital marketplace for PC gaming, has been ratcheting up censorship mostly due to pressure from payment processors Visa and Mastercard, though some games are being censored purely at the behest of Steam with no apparent connection to payment processor censorship.

The AI gold rush is causing computer component prices to skyrocket: A price increase for the Switch 2 has already been announced, Valve's new Steam Machine is launching at $1,059 for the base price, and the Playstation 6 will also almost certainly cost four figures as well. Given that the next Xbox console is reportedly more or less just a gaming PC, it seems like video game consoles as we know it could be dying out all together.

It's... overwhelming, to put it lightly. I initially wanted to write about Sony's decision to kill off physical games by 2028 and what this means going forward, how the console market could die and the games industry is likely heading towards (if not already in) a crash, stuff like that. However, a bunch of smarter people than I have already done this. So, instead, I want to take a more hopeful approach to the situation:

What can we do about this? How do we respond to Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo (with game key cards) working to take away our ability to actually own the games we purchase forever¹? I think I have the answer to that question... and it is to download and play Panzer Dragoon Saga for the Sega Saturn.

(Panzer Dragoon Saga. Image credit Backloggd)

...and, no, I don't mean that you should fork over the ridiculous amount of money that it goes for on the second hand market. I mean, Download It For Free and Play It In An Emulator. On Your Computer. That You Already Own.²

Of course, absolutely go ahead and load it up on an actual Sega Saturn if you have that option available to you, but the point I'm trying to make is that you should experience this piece of human art gatekept from you by the games industry through any means necessary, especially if you've never played it before. Maybe you've also never played the other Panzer Dragoon games (there are four in total, not including spinoff titles) which you owe it to yourself to try all of at least once, but none of the other three are like Panzer Dragoon Saga. Frankly, nothing is like Panzer Dragoon Saga.

Released by SEGA in 1998 at the tail end of the Saturn's life, Panzer Dragoon Saga takes the series from being a rail shooter to a fully fledged RPG. Team Andromeda, the division within SEGA that developed the Panzer Dragoon games were not experienced in making RPGs, which lead to them making a game that challenges a lot of the conventions that other RPGs take for granted. For example, you do not control a party of adventurers but rather one person, the protagonist Edge, as well his dragon companion which you get to name yourself.

Panzer Dragoon Saga is a fully 3D RPG, which, if you're familiar with the Final Fantasy games, and many other RPGs from the time, you'll know that this was largely not done³. Contemporaries instead relied on pre-rendered 2D backgrounds filled with 3D characters, 2D characters over 3D backgrounds, (à la Grandia), or even just remained fully 2D.

The game also features full voice acting in Japanese (Sega of America's troubles at the time meant they would probably sooner have scrapped the release entirely rather than dub it into English) and lengthy cutscenes. We may be used to cinematic, movie-like experiences in video games now, but that wasn't something that would be normalized until the next generation of hardware.

“It was such a difficult process that even now, when I run into problems, I think, ‘Well, at least this isn’t as hard as when we were developing Panzer Dragoon Saga.’”
- series creator Yukio Futatsugi

It may not be surprising to hear this, but Panzer Dragoon Saga had a hellish development cycle. Plenty of games have tough development cycles, sure, but reading about Saga, it seems to me that it was especially bleak. They were doing something that nobody else had done before, and had to figure out how to do it all for themselves. Meanwhile, SEGA upper management were looking forward to it being a hit that would draw RPG gamers back from PlayStation and Final Fantasy over to the Saturn, a lofty goal that the game ultimately did not even come close to meeting.

The game also had an identifiable human cost; two developers died while working on the game, one in a motorcycle accident, and the other to suicide. Those deaths were likely related to the massive amount of stress they were put under to make the game, and both heavily impacted the rest of the team as they had to continue working despite the tragedy.

I highly recommend reading more about the game's development and history in the article from The Ringer I linked earlier, (here it is again for your convenience), though be warned this does go into detail about the story and ending of the game. This all is actually why I am specifically recommending Panzer Dragoon Saga as opposed to any other game, because both the game itself, as well as the story behind is, is about human perseverance and endurance in the face of tragedy. The developers suffered and worked long hours to create a masterpiece of a video game that hardly anyone ever actually played.

But you can play it. Right now. It does not matter that SEGA has not and possibly will never officially re-release it. It does not matter that getting a "legitimate" copy would cost hundreds of dollars, because Panzer Dragoon Saga (nor any video game, for that matter), is not a product. This game's story did not begin or end with a bundle of CDs that Sega sold in the nineties, and it doesn't make a difference if they eventually figure out a way to re-sell it today, because little if any of that money would ever actually go to the people who made it a reality in the first place. Nothing will ever be as meaningful to what they went through as experiencing it for yourself.

It is a video game, after all, and video games are meant to be played. It doesn't belong to SEGA, it belongs to us, because we're the ones keeping it alive (something SEGA generally doesn't seem that keen on doing).

And that applies to every old video game, for the matter. There are thousands of games with similar stories, and I encourage you to dig and find the things that you care about the most. The best response in the face of an assault on the idea that you can own your own copy of a video game is to remove yourself from that system as much as you possibly can, and play games only for the benefit of yourself and your community.

This doesn't just mean downloading abandonware, which sits in a legal grey area⁴, it also means things like buying indie games directly from their creators (such as on a platform like itch.io), playing used games, supporting charity bundles, or playing (and contributing to!) open source games.

Corporations like Sony and SEGA will try to control what you buy and what you can access, but never ever forget that you are not beholden to them. You are free.

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