Kenzo Saruhashi, the CEO of Nippon Ichi Software and now also president of subsidiary NIS America, is just one of many company heads concerned about Sony’s recent decision to discontinue the manufacturing of physical game discs starting in 2028. But he seems optimistic that there may be some sort of compromise that works out well enough for his company, which produces lots of physical limited editions of its developed and published games.
At PAX West, I sat down with Saruhashi to chat about his first year as head of Nippon Ichi and his recent appointment as president of NIS America. As a part of that discussion, I asked him about Sony’s recent announcement, and how it impacts his business. Nippon Ichi Software and subsidiary NIS America both frequently produce not just regular physical releases of their developed and published games, but also elaborate limited-edition boxes with not just discs, but various other goodies packed together. It did briefly dabble in using game key cards on Switch 2, but this seems to have been an unpopular decision with the company’s audience.
Saruhashi began by telling me he and the company were operating off the same information that the general public had at the moment, and that he didn’t know what other companies were doing. “But 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.”
I asked him if this would mean the company would move to a “code in the box” format once this took effect, and he acknowledged that was one possibility, but perhaps not the only one.
“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.”
When I heard this, it made me suspect there was perhaps a chance that Sony was hearing enough flack from devs themselves that it might be softening on its stance, just a little bit. This is somewhat supported by another piece of recent news, which is that PlayStation is reportedly sending surveys to game developers with a question about how they sell physical games.
Both of these are just tiny suggestions that may mean nothing. Saruhashi could just be being optimistic, and I find it doubtful that Sony would fully reverse its plans. What seems more likely to me is that Sony may find a path to allow certain companies the ability to continue making limited amounts of physical discs for special limited editions, such as those Nippon Ichi makes. But until otherwise announced, we can only assume that the death of discs will occur right on schedule at the end of next year.
