Sony Responds To PlayStation Disc Backlash - Kinda Funny Games Daily 07.31.26

0:00Tim Gettys:It's Kinda Funny's Patreon Pledge Month. Support us at patreon.com slash kinda funny. We really appreciate it. Today's gaming stories include Sony responds to the backlash from going all digital. Elden Ring's movie has wrapped filming and EA is set to close its$55 billion deal next week. We'll have all this and more because this is Kinda Funny Games Daily.

0:31Tim Gettys:what is up everybody and welcome back to kind of funny games daily for friday july 31st 2026 rent is due make sure you get it in there i'm roger recording today i'm joined by snow bike Michael Cole the only person i want to spend the end of the month with that's you and the first of the month and big kev dog in the middle he's here and everything it's just us in the building today no one else's it's our friday it's a mike and roger friday okay i was gonna say i think it's everyone's friday technically yeah but it's going to be our friday with them yes because we're running all the shows yes we are uh because of course we have games daily here and then the games cast is going to be me and mike as well and then right after that mike is going to join uh the streaming crew which is going to be blessed andy himself and tim and they're all going to play halo campaign evolved for a little marathon stream so make sure to support and make sure they go as long as humanly possible let's keep big tim dog in the building it's all about keeping the big daddy in the building.

1:27Tim Gettys:That's all that matters. That's all that matters. Everybody Rogers Friday. It is Friday. It's the end of the month. How are you feeling? I'm feeling good. Feeling relieved. You know what I mean? We're here. We hit the Friday. A lot of things. Are you feeling accomplished for the end of the July? No, I feel like everything's just starting. I feel like we got a lot of things good in the horizon. We got top 100. We got a lot of fun stuff coming up, but I feel like it's like, Oh no, that was the break. Now we're just Skyrim. We announced Skyrim. I'm very nervous, honestly, because it's like now that's barreling towards like a week of just like it's just going to be a blur.

1:57Tim Gettys:Mike and I are just going to be in a room and just playing Skyrim together. I'm pretty pumped up about it. Great time. Roger also played what could be one of the hit games of 2026 last. Let me guess. Dino Blade, Dino Blade, Dino Blade. Dino Blade, low key, real fun. Shout out to Dino Blade. There's no way. Made by two jabronis. They did their best. We got to say, hey, they did a good job. They did their best. Dino Blade's a lot of fun. Killer rock music. Nice. Fun bosses. Dinosaurs that have to ditch the flesh and embrace the blade. That's how the evolution went. That the flesh wasn't enough, so they had to embrace the blade.

2:36And that's why now.

2:37Tim Gettys:The flesh wasn't enough. Yeah, flesh and bones. When you're like fighting each other, it's just your mouth and your claws. Oh, okay. And it just wasn't enough. So they had to embrace the blade. And so that's why the dinosaurs had the blades out here. Did they explain who made the blade? The earth. Right. It came right from the earth. I mean, it's sick, though. So Dino Blade is not it? No, Dino Blade is good. I like Dino Blade a lot. Dino Blade is a solid, fun, good time for sure. It definitely shows it's indie. Hey, we're developed by two jabronis at the max. I fuck with it heavy. But like at the same time, there's voice acting.

3:09There's really fun parry and dodge mechanics. It's a great, great action RPG. I like it. Dino Blade is a good time. Okay. Now, Roger, I want to talk to you about how many dudes, the newest, possibly the hottest upcoming rogue-alike deck builder to hit the scene. How many dudes is a simple question, Roger, that we've asked for many years. How many dudes would it take to take down one silverback gorilla? How many dudes to go up against 972 infant children? I requested a code as soon as I saw it in my email box.

3:49Tim Gettys:How many has dropped how many dudes we could pull up some of this uh kevin i know it's the last minute but yeah i want to i want to see how many dudes for the audience because this looks awesome yeah if you have not played how many dudes or if you don't know about how many dudes it is a rogue like deck builder so nice throughout the round you'll be getting more dudes into your dude ranch and then your goal will be to put those dudes into certain categories i i ran an all dentist deck so all my dudes were dentists and dentists have certain abilities that they perform throughout the round that can help uh it's a novocaine injection so my dentists were giving people toughness they were giving them extra health and so then i matched those dentists up with cowboys i also matched them up with bards and all of them were doing different passive abilities while in the run to take down tigers, lions, ducks the size of horses, horses the size of ducks.

4:47This game is a ton of fun, especially if you like those deck-like, roguelike, palatro-like builders. You know the game. You know when you see it.

4:58Tim Gettys:Like a vampire survivor almost, a little bit like that. No. No? Yeah, with the abilities and the choice, but you're not moving around. Wow, and it's on mobile too. Yeah, this game rocks. Oh, look at that. Snowbike Mike right there. How many dudes? How many dudes? How many dudes? And now, Roger, let me tell you, I played for two and a half hours, and I got to the final fight. Okay. And I almost beat on my first run. I love the art style. I love the little animations right there. I mean, it's super fun and simplistic. I like when we just take a concept, a very fun, silly internet concept, and we make it into something more fleshed out and cool.

5:30Tim Gettys:So there's a lot of dudes. A lot of dudes at the dude ranch. This is a must play. I love that. Yep. I've also been playing Splatoon Raiders. And I just want to say really quick, what a great game. What a fun time. What a fun time. I know. I mean, you have a code. And I'll get to it. All right. But before we get to that, we'll talk more about video games, I'm sure, in Gamescast. But let's talk about the video game news. Because remember, if you're watching live, be part of the show by super chatting on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. We couldn't do this without our Patreon producers of our kind of fun.

6:03Tim Gettys:Patreon.com slash kind of funny. So thank you, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster, Delaney the Somme Twining, and Lax Nomad. For now, let's begin with what is and forever will be the Rope Report. It's time for some news. Five stories today. Baker's Dozen. Story number one. Sony says it hears PlayStation disc backlash, but will continue its plans. This is from Chris Scullion over at VGC. Sony has broken its silence on the backlash to its decision to stop making PlayStation discs. The company announced a month ago that physical disc games will be discontinued for PlayStation consoles from January 2028, and the decision continues to see fierce debate online.

6:51Tim Gettys:Now, during a Q &A session following its Q1 2026 earnings announcement, Sony CFO Lin Tao has addressed the situation, stating that Sony had been giving the decision to go digital only some thought for a while before announcing it, and it doesn't plan to change its mind. Quote, we announced that from January 2028 onward, we will no longer be manufacturing game discs, so we announced it one and a half years ahead, she said via Sony's interpreter. Well, there are various reasons we made this decision, the biggest being the digitalization of contents overall and has been progressing. That's the biggest factor.

7:34Tim Gettys:It's not just for PlayStation, but for all kinds of content. Digitalization is progressing. And so when we think about the future, when we put a lot of thought and time, we cautiously considered this and we came to this conclusion and we're going to cautiously move this forward. Tao also acknowledged the backlash to the decision on social media for the first time, stating that while Sony was aware of players' reaction to the news, its focus was on how to keep them interested in PlayStation games when it goes all digital. Quote, to this decision, we have received various opinions, and people have strong views, and we understand that the community has put forward those views to us, she explained.

8:15Tim Gettys:Quote, games are loved by many people. It's a form of entertainment that's loved by people, and it's connected to people's fond memories in many cases, so we understand those emotions we want to consider that and in the future digital ecosystem how do we engage the gamers is something that we would like to continue to explore now mike how do we engage the gamers how do we engage how do we engage that's the age-old question that's right we engage the gamers hey everyone we heard you we see you on social media under every single thing we post yeah adding a little a little tag on every single twitter post that says hey by the way It could be about fucking Marvel versus Capcom, too.

8:55It'd be like, hey, they're going all digital future. They're moving physical discs. We see it. We hear it. We understand what you want. But guess what? We are still going towards that future.

9:07Tim Gettys:Yeah, we are going to ignore you, and we're going to keep on going, and we're going to put the blinders on and hope that you guys forget. I mean, we've seen the numbers. Matt Piscitella, of course, from Serkana, has shared the numbers. We've seen it, right? There is a huge decline in physical sales, right? People have gone digital, and it is the looming future of all of us going digital. We have now just also spent two weeks with PlayStation outages and Xbox outages, and we know what it's like when you go all digital, the problems that could come from that, right, with digital ownership or non-ownership, whatever you may say.

9:40Tim Gettys:And not like GOG ownership where you can, like, own the digital version and put it on a disc. No, this is DRM.theWazoo. Exactly. So, yeah, that's the current situation that gamers around the world are currently facing and really the reality of entertainment. Right. We've seen the digitalization of everything. Right. Movies, DVDs, VHS. We're all we're all going towards, hey, we're just streaming this and we don't really own it. But we like to pretend like we own it. You know, we just hope until, you know, our Terminator 2 edition on PlayStation doesn't get removed. Yes. Yeah. Sorry. No, go for it.

10:13Tim Gettys:No, I mean, it's just I it's just so sad. And I think it's such a short-sighted decision where it makes sense, right? Like when you look at the numbers, right? Like, okay, people aren't buying this thing. It makes a lot of sense when you look at the numbers. Sure. But my big, but here, my huge, but my huge, but here is that I, I do feel like there is a middle ground here. I mean, we're still, Sony is still producing and working with distributors when it comes to their movie releases, right? They, those still exist. I do think that there is this middle ground of like, Hey, maybe not the best answer for the people that love physical stuff, but what if we jack up the price a little bit?

10:49Tim Gettys:What if we keep on making limited runs of these things? What if we at least try to preserve this in some way, shape, or fashion to continue to make sure that people that really want this can have this? And I struggle to find a positive in a company saying, well, you guys aren't buying it, so we're just going to remove your right to own the video game that you're purchasing and not give you any protections, not give you any positives for this change that is, again, fundamentally changing the way that a lot of consumers, people in this audience that really love physical stuff, are going to have to kind of reckon with with their ownership of media.

11:26Tim Gettys:And unless they're looking at everybody and saying, hey, digital games are cheaper, or hey, we have this new clause here where if you own a digital version, you own the video game, and if we ever remove it, you get your money back. Like, something to at least try to make people feel a little bit better about it and i think that that is that is the thing that ekes through this entire thing it's like okay you're doing this but you have to give us a positive you have to give us some type of protection here that makes us the gamer feel as though you're not just fucking you know just destroying us constantly just constantly taking from us taking taking taking until we owe nothing right i mean we see it with like even the ownership of like consoles right like xbox back in the day remember they did like the thing where you rent to buy or whatever the Xbox, iPhones are doing that now.

12:09Tim Gettys:Apple's doing that now. Like we're getting to the place where we're clarned out, where we are at this place where no one owns anything. And we're just, we don't own anything. And it's just like, I don't understand how this is a positive. And I don't understand how PlayStation doesn't see that they have to give us something. Very well said, Roger. Yeah, you have not spelled out or promised the positives. Something. Hey, the next Sony console doesn't have a disk drive. We're going to save you$100. Well, we know that's not true. No, they're going to charge a thousand. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Nine hundred dollars instead of a thousand dollars.

12:40Tim Gettys:Exactly. So, yeah, that's the unfortunate part. As you said it so well, Rogers, there's no positive coming from this. Everything will stay the same. We are just now not buying the disc anymore. Yeah. And it's like and of course, they don't have to give us anything. I'm just saying as a consumer, it's like we are at this point now where we have endless options. Video games are fucking expensive as hell. There are ways that we can get that we can play video games that we feel a little bit better about that aren't from PlayStation. That is, again, can just take away everything right. GOG exists like Steam has a better reputation than PlayStation when it comes to this stuff where if Steam goes down, like you can still play a lot of these games.

13:15Tim Gettys:Like I'm just saying, like, of course, they don't owe us anything technically. But I think as gamers, as people who are trying to invest a lot of our hard earned money into these platforms, if you're just taking away, hey, no physical games exist. also games are still fucking$70 okay well at least Nintendo over here said hey physical games are more expensive but you know digital games are less expensive yeah so let's let's even it out a little bit so I don't know I think that this is a mistake and a shot shot in the foot completely done by themselves like this is not a thing that they had to do they did not of course they're saying oh we did a year and a half ahead of time well again you had you have a year and a half now to make it right to figure out some way to spin this story and you're not doing it and from a pure pr standpoint you're not doing a good job explaining this to the audience and like connecting with them in some way and trying to have some type of like they don't have that person going out there and like they don't have like an asha sharma they don't have somebody out there at least talking to the people and being like hey this we did this but also xyz right like you're just putting out a fucking press release and everyone's like well fuck you like you know i mean like that That is the only way that we're engaging with PlayStation right now.

14:23Tim Gettys:And it's, it, it is very easy for the internet to bear arms against a, a mask, a faceless corporate entity. That is always the easiest thing for them to do. So yeah, it's always an interesting conversation. You bring that up, right. Of like the diehards in the know are seeing and reacting to this, but the random Joe blow and everybody that's playing the games, they're already just, Hey, I buy these games already digitally, or I don't understand in a year and a half that maybe I'll lose my discs. But really, I think the larger majority of the gamers out there are probably going to be unaffected by this.

14:55Right. We see a lot of people on social media. Hey, Xbox, this is your moment to shine. Say that you're going to keep this going. It's like, first off, they're definitely going digital. Let's get real. That is not going to go digital. And two, nobody's ditching their PlayStation and their library that they've already created and all the hit games over there to jump onto Xbox, who has been a dying ship for quite some time. Right. Like PlayStation is in number one. They're holding onto that. And I don't see a major turn of events. You're going, they've gone all digital. Everyone's ditching out on this.

15:25And I,

15:26Tim Gettys:I see everyone, I see some people in the check and all uptight being like, Oh, well, you know, no one cares about this. No one cares about this. And it's like, it's 50 50, right? The internet, of course on Twitter and everything, it's like freaking out about the discs. Right. And then some people are like, you know, it doesn't matter. I think we should all kind of like realize that the things that we're purchasing are not real. Like, you know what I mean? Like they are just licenses that are being taken away from us at any given moment right is that wild and like and like and like the idea that i'm saying like hey guys like maybe we we should own like a sliver can we own a sliver can we like have a conversation about like owning a little bit of the things that we're purchasing like if i'm spending 70 on a video game i don't think it's unreasonable to say hey playstation can you let me own that thing for real like can you can you put it down on a piece of paper and say i own this thing like i i think we are in this place now we were so used to not owning anything and like again when it comes to physical items when it comes to like we own we should be able to own digital media that we are purchasing if that's the only way to do things and i think that there should be legislation i believe that these companies should go out there and make i i think that xbox should do that if they wanted to do that right of course they're going in an all digital future if you want to get on the side of gamers which i know they will never do because it's a big massive corporation of microsoft you should look at everybody and say hey we're going the gog approach like you purchase this game you own it like is there's some writing there's some way that you can purchase the thing or if it is taken away from you you get your money back in some way so i don't know i i think it's okay to to ask more of these massive corporations i like it roger and i fuck very well said yeah yeah i fuck with digital i love digital and i purchase games on digital but i also think it's like you see it right now when it comes to gen z when you see younger generations like they yearn for physical media they do yearn for earn to buy a house yes they earn to own something to own fucking something in our lives yes if you go on the internet you will see gen z and gen alpha that is just just hoping to own something that's why i bought that sign yeah that's why you bought this so yeah i don't know i think we all just want to own things and i i think that there i mean records came back as matt sanders puts in there like vinyl is on the up of course it's not taking over the entirety of the music industry but it is a way that people are connecting with things cassettes came back cds are coming back in some way like i do think that there is going to be a moment where video game physical video game sales go down down down and then there's going to be a moment where people look around and say fuck i don't own anything i do want to own this video game that i love physically and that's when either the boutique limited run games do we see things like limited run games maybe partner with sony in some capacity i think eventually you know physical games and they put out their little run and people buy onto that we had to probably see that right yeah no i think so i think you'll see something like that eventually i think that that is the way that playstation will concede to gamers in some way is they'll be like hey actually we'll be working with this company to do these things and you know we are still gonna do mass run video games like they're not gonna happen like we're not gonna make a million copies of wolverine but we'll make a hundred fifty thousand twenty thousand whatever it is like the smaller amount that we know we can sell out um and yeah i don't know whatever the chat's pissing me off right now because there's somebody out there that said roger's really for uh non-biodegradable plastics i just want you to own something guys i don't know i'm sorry i'm sorry doesn't like e-waste i can tell you yes i don't like he was i just want you guys like if you pay up for something i want you to own the thing i don't know i'm sorry i don't think that's a bad take yeah i think it's a horrible take it's a horrible fucking thing it's interesting to say that sony sees you right sony clearly sees oh they can't not see you yeah oh they i feel bad for that i feel bad for that social media team of like these poor people just trying to make it work just try to be like hey a god of war law fees here i got like here's the release date and it's just like fuck you fuck you fuck you elephant room elephant room it's like oh god i feel bad for everybody whatever all right that's it everybody we did it we talked about playstation talked about discs and they don't give a shit but you know we give a shit about them like story number two 824s elden ring movie hits crucial milestone as production nears end this from michael mcweather whereter Let me try that again.

19:37Tim Gettys:Michael McWeer tour at Polygon. I like that name. A24's Elden Ring movie is now officially one step closer to reality. According to a crew member who worked on director Alex Garland's live action adaptation of the 2022 game, filming has nearly wrapped on the Elden Ring movie after nearly four months. But the wait for the final product will be a long one. Elden Ring isn't slated to arrive in movie theaters until 2028. Prop maker Sean Sean Schofield, who has worked on productions such as The Witcher and The Ring of Power, posted on his Instagram account news of the film's status on Thursday. Schofield uploaded a photo of what appears to be a rap gift and a thank you note to cast and crew signed by Garland and by producer Alan Raich.

20:25Tim Gettys:Matthew Penry Davey, Peter Rice, and Andrew McDonald and Charlie Reed. quote dream job to end all dream jobs showfield wrote six solid months of blood sweat and tears making the coolest stuff ever working alongside the best of the best can't share anything else for a very long time but i couldn't be more proud of what we did now elden ring enters post-production and the film's far off release date indicates there's plenty of vfx work still to be done Polygoners reach out to A24 to confirm the movie's production status and will update when the company responds Mikey are we excited for this Elden Ring movie excitement for the Elden Ring movie very high Roger the excitement is very high I do have some questions though Roger tell me four months of shooting is that short Raj tight timeline it's not that bad I mean Alex Garland is a very efficient filmmaker that's the best way I would describe him.

21:26Tim Gettys:He's somebody that comes into productions and kind of like has a vision. So like that's pretty tight for a big massive$100 million movie. Yeah. But that's good. That's not bad. Okay. A lot of VFX. Yeah. In my mind. Yeah. I assumed that. Yeah. When I think Elden Ring, I think the grand scale. I think, yeah, we're going to see a lot of CGI animation going on here. Yeah. I think so too. I'm, we talked about it and we did a whole gamescast, everybody that was a massive hit. I think about 5 ,000 views on this gamescast where Andy, Mike, and I talked about A24's Elden Ring when it first started, about four months ago, when it first started filming.

22:01Tim Gettys:And I was just really fascinated with this move because A24, before then, before when we were talking about it, they had not had a movie that grossed, I believe,$100 million in the box office. And this movie has a budget of$100 million. Now, Backrooms, of course. Backrooms is a massive hit, made their money and so much more backroom. uh that's that movie killed and is a massive massive hit and is the number one a24 movie of all time um so this is a24 definitely going in a direction of like hey we're trying to make this a massive thing this is going to be a moment and i am very very very hopeful on this one i mean alex garland is an incredible director um and yeah i completely see that they're going to put a lot of work into the the vfx side of things and try to make this feel as grand as humanly possible because if it's an Elden Ring movie, it just kind of feels like a guy running around, like, and find a few small monsters.

22:56Tim Gettys:Like, no, you're, you're so right. And you have giants. You gotta have some fucking giants. You gotta have multiple of them. You have some big ones. Yeah. It'll be interesting. You know, you just think of Elden Ring, you think of all of the dark souls universe with Miyazaki and what they've built and the, you know, lack of storytelling in quotes, right? There's a lot of story there. There's a lot of lore, but the players have to go out and seek it and find it. Right. And it's like, I'm still just excited to see how you tell the story. what's the story all about how will it look you know like this is very exciting especially from the video games to movie adaptation route here uh to see how this lands i'm pumped yeah and that's that's one that like i have only i don't know anything about the lore of elden ring right where it's like you and andy talking about it it was like so deep and there were so many twists and turns that i had no idea about so i wonder how much it's like almost like i don't know it's like the feeling of elden ring is also as important as like the story of elden ring right and like you kind of want that like grand adventure vibe to it more so than you also want like hey like here's like the actual lore of the story i think that those things are equally important to making a good adaptation it's like kind of like adapting especially with a large open world game kind of like that wondrous feeling and like that fear and that energy of like oh my gosh like turn the corner holy shit music starts playing like what the fuck like you want that energy in the movie and i wonder i think that you can do that with the director like alex garland so i want to see all the props too i wish i could like walk on the set i want to see all the props i want to see what they made what things that i can point out and be like oh my gosh i recognize that from x y and z right like it would be really cool to go on location with this team and be able to see it all you know we saw some photos of like is this real like what what's going on here just to be there in person to see all of it would be really fun yeah i see uh super chat over here from loyal freak friendly reminder that a24 is an ai partnership so the worry about them using ai and elder ring is real fuck ai uh yes they do have an ai partnership and i agree i don't know if they're using ai in this movie i think that that was like a different situation there but uh yeah i mean a24 is they're going off the deep end they're doing some dumb fucking shit we'll be talking about ai later on in the story later on in the news i mean right yeah it definitely will because i'm gonna play you some ai here you're gonna blow your mind lots of little tease right there but before we show you some ai and talk about some insane stuff let me show you some

25:21Joey Noel:good stuff from our sponsor what's up everybody it's greg here to talk to you about patreon pledge month if you enjoyed the crazy amount of sgf coverage we put out in june consider tossing us a few bucks this month with a Patreon membership or upgraded pledge for that lovely month of July. We'll be putting up some of our favorite Gregways from the year publicly to give you a taste of what goes up daily for members. This week, why, you're getting me and Jen reflecting on nine years of marriage and teaching Ben about LGBTQ plus equality. Earlier this month, of course, we announced a new perk coming to Patreon.

25:57Joey Noel:The person who gifts the most Patreon memberships on patreon.com slash kind of funny will receive a custom character in our games cast intro for the next month done by the one and only andy cortez our first winner is alex andy will be working on this during a game play stream this week and it'll be included in the slideshow between the shows as well as the games cast intro for the month of august congratulations alex and congratulations to all you for supporting kind of funny all the time we hope you go this extra mile by heading over to patreon.com slash kind of funny where we get the best membership ad rev split in supporting us you want to tell them what you were just telling me i was talking about dude juice and how and how many dudes dude juice is an item that is sold in the dude ranch market and the dude juice is used to revive my dudes when they go down but then when i got to the final fights right you go the finale, it's five fights in a row.

26:56You don't go to the dude ranch market, and I couldn't buy more dude juice to revive my dudes. And so when my dudes went down in the final five fights, I had no dude juice to revive them. But I had a pocket full of dude juice prior to that, but I used up all my dude juice.

27:16Story number three.

27:19Tim Gettys:Electronic Arts set to close$55 billion dollar go private deal next week this is from jennifer moss over at variety electronic arts is set to close its previously announced 55 billion dollar go private deal next week according to the video game publishing giant in a document filed with the sec thursday the battlefield six and the sims publisher disclosed as of july 30th 2026 all regulatory approvals required to complete the merger have been obtained. Electronic Arts currently expects the merger to close on or around or about the close of trading on August 4th, 2026. Completion of the merger remains subject to the satisfaction or waiver of the remaining customary closing conditions set forth in the merger agreement.

28:09Tim Gettys:Last September, publicly traded company EA announced it had entered into a private equity deal with Saudi Arabia's public investment fund Silverlake and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners in an all-cash transaction valued at$55 billion. Upon completion, EA is expected to remain headquartered in Redwood City, California, and continue to be led by Andrew Wilson as CEO. Mikey, what do we think about this? Yeah, Roger, I mean, we knew for quite some time that there was coming down the pipeline. Would it be approved? Would it not be approved? Here we are today, standing at the doorway to say, this is going down, right?

28:51And I'm not in love with this at all. I'm more kind of holding on for dear life to see, hey, what happens to some of my favorite franchises? Some of the development teams that I've grown to love with Maxis, of course, with the Sims. I love all the EA sports games, right? Like, what will this turn out to be? Because in a perfect world that Snow Mike lives in, gumdrops and sunshine. It usually is supposed to be positive. We're investing into this and giving people more money for their jobs that they do and we're getting more jobs out of it. We're making great games. It turns out that doesn't happen with this shit.