The discs have been a formality for longer than most gamers understand or want to admit. Sony is discontinuing disc sales as a response to how gamers are buying games not the other way around. So it's an irrational response but an understandable emotional response. It's a final marker of an era that realistically ended more than a decade ago. That video games are not an island: an enclosed experience of just you, the game, the console, the controller, the TV, and a bunch of wires connecting it all together. When we were kids, you had this little disc that exploded out into a world that was all your own to explore and experience. Now it's not all your own. When you bought a PlayStation 2 and some games, your relationship with Sony could end at any time and nothing would change in your day-to-day gaming experience. But today, buying a console is an ongoing relationship with the manufacturer every microsecond you play a game. And most people don't want to admit that. And ending disc production forces us to admit that old era has been dead and gone. More frighteningly, we helped it along every step of the way by overwhelmingly preferring digital downloads and always-on online games.