Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima is “afraid” of a future without physical means

Like it or not, we are heading into a world where media is consumed digitally rather than physically. Over the past few decades, we’ve seen CDs, movies, and books cross the digital frontier, and while the printed word can be said to always be around, physical discs for music and movies are slowly but surely disappearing as downloads and releases. transmission become more popular.

This clearly holds Hideo kojima awake at night as he has been posting about the death of physical media on his Twitter account. If you already follow the Metal gear Creator, you know you have a voracious appetite for physical media and always post photos of your latest movie and music purchases.

However, he is well aware that this will not last forever, and regrets the fact that soon we will not have long-lasting physical access to the media we consume:

Such concerns are well founded. As we discussed a few years ago, a fully digital future means commercial convenience and the ability to carry your collection with reduced rights when it comes to ownership; When you buy an album on CD, you can listen to that CD for as long as it can be physically played (which may not be as long as you think), but if you buy the same album digitally, you may lose access to it at any time. point for a number of reasons. In reality, you have nothing but the right to access that music digitally.

While Kojima doesn’t mention games in his posts, the same is happening in the interactive entertainment sphere as well, with digital sales growing all the time (last year, 67% of game sales in the UK were digital, while Nintendo is seeing massive year-over-year increases in downloads on Switch).

Therefore, it is not difficult to see a time when game discs and cards are removed from the equation; Many people have already accepted the convenience of digital media, and with the PS5 and Xbox Series S / X, physical games are simply a delivery method; Like digital titles, they must be installed on the console’s SSD and cannot be run directly from the disk itself (something that makes the Switch somewhat unique).

Then there is the fact that games can be removed from the list and from the distribution, eliminating the possibility of accessing them. Kojima has first-hand experience of this, of course, thanks to the fact that his former employer, Konami, removed one of his most famous works from distribution.

While there is a healthy niche when it comes to collecting physical games these days, especially on Switch, it’s easy to see that it’s becoming the exception rather than the rule. When that day comes, at least we know that Kojima will shed a tear along with the rest of us.