Sony really just couldn’t fucking help themselves, could they? Yes, I saw the news that the Sony Corporation would be discontinuing production of physical discs for PlayStation consoles by 2028 , pursuing an all-digital approach to the release of their games from then on. It’s a profoundly anti-consumer and anti-culture decision, stripping away agency from people to control how they enjoy the media they purchase and ensuring that any art that does emerge from this future status quo is ephemeral and able to be revoked – or outright erased – at any time. It is, put simply, a bad look to support Sony in its pursuits at this point and time. So what, then, does one do when one has spent weeks preparing a round-up of the very titles that might be subjected to this dystopian approach to media distribution? I watched the June 2026 State of Play, finding it adequate as a showcase and therefore sufficiently worth my time to cover. There were some good-looking games in that presentation, made by ...
On March 30th, it was made public that this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo would be cancelled. This decision was attributed to the strain of the ongoing plague and an increasing number of studios electing not to attend. This would be only the latest in a line of troubles faced by the long-running trade show. Setting aside that two of the previous three shows were also cancelled for similar reasons, the 2021 expo faced criticism for pivoting to an online-only interface that had technical issues, lacked vital information and came across as irrelevant in the face of individual game publishers' digital showcases. The last pre-pandemic show in 2019, meanwhile, was embroiled in controversy over the leaking of personal information for thousands of media professionals attending E3. It's not unthinkable that this latest cancellation will prove to be the fine point capping off a larger industry narrative: the decline and impending death of E3. Nevertheless, the gears of ind...