Mexican lawmakers move to take Sony to antitrust court over the death of the disc

Two Mexican politicians have opened a new front in the disc fight. Federal representative Iraís Reyes and senator Luis Donaldo Colosio, both of the Movimiento Ciudadano party, announced they will file an antitrust complaint against Sony with COFECE, Mexico's Federal Economic Competition Commission, over the plan to stop pressing physical PlayStation discs from 2028. They are acting as private citizens and consumers rather than in their official capacity, and COFECE would still have to decide whether the complaint merits a formal investigation, so nothing has been settled yet.

Their case is about competition, not preservation. Kill the disc, they argue, and every new PlayStation game has to be bought through the PlayStation Store, handing Sony control over pricing, distribution and access while erasing physical retailers and the second-hand market, and leaving publishers dependent on whatever terms Sony sets. Colosio added a point specific to Mexico: in areas with patchy connectivity, a digital-only library could leave some households unable to download or play what they paid for. It is the same ownership-versus-licence worry raised in Brazil and at the EU, this time pointed at monopoly law.

GTA 6 is the flashpoint they keep coming back to. Rockstar's game launches November 19 with a download code in the box instead of a disc, it has already drawn a reported billions of dollars in pre-orders, and it is the biggest blockbuster yet to go disc-free. Mexico now joins the EU, which said it will not block Sony, and Brazil, which filed a game-preservation bill, as the third government-level response in under two weeks, and Sony still has not said a word.