Titanfall 2 and the Case for Physical Media

I recently picked up a copy of Titanfall 2 for under seven dollars, used. I had always heard great things about the game but because the first game was exclusive to Xbox I never picked up the second. You don't need to play the first to play the second.

Respawn's shooter released on October 28, 2016, wedged between Battlefield 1 the week before and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare the week after. It is one of the worst release windows any game has ever drawn. Two of the biggest shooter franchises on the planet boxed it in on both sides, and most of the industry's attention went to them instead.

The reviews told a different story than the sales did. Critics praised the campaign for doing something few shooters bother attempting, building a mechanically inventive single player arc around a pilot and a titan with real chemistry between them, then backing it with a multiplayer built around movement as a skill in its own right. None of that mattered enough in a market that had already decided where its money was going that month.

Titanfall 2 launched to projections north of nine million units. On its earnings call that quarter, EA confirmed the game fell well short of that, without ever putting an exact number to it, and analysts later pegged the total closer to four million against Battlefield 1's fifteen. EA didn't call it a failure. Executives said it still sold well, just not to expectations, and the shortfall got quietly absorbed into a strong quarter carried by Battlefield 1 and Call of Duty.

But fans found it over time. Copies filtered down through trade-ins and clearance shelves over the years, landing in front of people at prices that reflected what the game had become rather than what it launched as. Nearly a decade later, people are still talking about it online, discovering it fresh or revisiting it, proof that its popularity has only grown since launch.

That mechanism is what Sony's announcement puts on notice. On July 1, 2026, Sony confirmed it will end physical disc production for new PlayStation games starting in January 2028.

Sony framed it as a natural response to how people already buy games. Digital already accounts for the overwhelming majority of PS4 and PS5 software sales, so from a spreadsheet, the decision makes sense.

But a spreadsheet doesn't explain how a game like Titanfall 2 gets discovered a decade later by someone who wasn't paying attention at launch. Without a disc, there is no clearance shelf. There is no trade-in pile. There is no secondhand copy sitting in a case, waiting for someone to take a seven dollar chance on it. The price of a digital game is whatever the storefront says it is, indefinitely, and if a publisher decides a game isn't worth supporting anymore, there's no physical object left behind to keep it alive on its own.

Titanfall 2 had one of the worst launch weeks a great game has ever had, and it still found its audience, because physical media gave it a second and third and fourth chance to. The games launching after January 2028 won't get that. They'll get exactly the reception they earn in their first week, and nothing after.