Between DRM, DLC, mandatory connectivity and the end of physical media, the future will look back on this era as the 'dark age' of digital gaming history. Maintaining activation servers, cloud storage and digital delivery costs money. If it doesn't disappear when the title reaches EOL, it certainly does when the company is gone or shifts business models. And draconian copyright laws create legal jeopardy around orphaned games from long-dead companies while the DMCA makes it illegal to remove DRM.
For now, it's still possible to crack consoles and extract the games from disk. However, we are probably approaching an era where encryption / trusted computing is so good that future systems will never be cracked.
However, the flip side is that so many games are built using common game engines, and receive multi-platform releases. So there's a broader surface area for potential preservation. Maybe the PS6 version is permanently dead, but the PC version lives on.
Sony in particular is doubling down on platform exclusives again. I was waiting for Ghost of Yōtei to come out on PC, but Sony cancelled the port. We're well and truly fucked without physical media for exclusives like this.
Yes, those things cost money, but the money that we want to make, we want to make it today. And this is how we make it. What economic incentive is there for preservation?
(/takes off devil's advocate hat and puts on flame suit)
Game companies should have to submit full copies of everything to run the game , servers and clients to the Library of Congress or Smithsonian for preservation
They should do legal deposit in the country the game is developed. Some places they have to. The Hitman series is in the collection of national library of Denmark.
Yes, phasing out physical discs is predatory. I'd like to also add that buying a console which can only run vetted games has already been predatory, and digital games are only the next natural step.
Also, remember the marketing idea of the "Disney Vault"? In the 90s, Disney would take all their movies in and out of print basically, only selling tapes some of the time, and they'd charge top dollar for them, because you couldn't just walk into Walmart and grab a copy of "Cinderella" anytime. They created scarcity easily this way, since before ebay, finding specific things like a certain videotape at a thrift store or something was a lot more work. So they would charge like $25 for a decades-old movie and say "Get it now, before it goes back in the vault!"
I can see this happening with games more after the death of physical media. Create artificial scarcity with limited time windows and charge top dollar for old games because there will be literally no way to get them besides on their digital store terms.
It'd be responsible of them to say that they can only provide 1 million downloads on the first day, or whatever the limits of their contract with the CDN says. Evidence that it's fake!
You saw a faked screenshot, but the meme is definitely referencing the direction that the industry is going and mocking this kind of artificial scarcity.
Hopefully emulation and piracy will continue to provide a reasonable check valve on this getting too far out of control. I don't personally engage in either at present outside of an old homebrewed Wii U, but I feel like the existence of those is important to remind the digital storefront/platform owners that at the end of the day they aren't actually the only game in town.
Either that or eventually we'll have to get some antitrust stuff happening to open these things up, though Epic's App Store lawsuit does not give me much hope in that direction.
I would attribute Disney's use of scarcity as a primary means to drive film and TV box office and streaming dollars in the Star Wars franchise.
This is already under threat due to the Star Wars AI videos being released on Youtube, seemingly without constraint as of yet.
The videos are not Hollywood quality [0], however they circumvent rules Disney can't easily break like using the likeness of any actor at any age in any circumstance.
These fan made videos get lots of views. Even if they were all removed from YouTube, this will be a difficult thing to stop.
I believe a generally accepted "good" or even "great" unofficial, Star Wars film built without sets or actors using AI is inevitable. And that this will be true for any popular franchise.
The natural corollary to this arc is into games, where using AI to code most or all of a AAA-competitive title would be considered inevitable.
I suspect Disney and Sony have at least someone pointing at this outcome.
[0] I suppose idealized Hollywood quality. They are better than some films.
Yes, for online titles for sure, but I think everything up to Xbox 360 / PS3 era has robust emulation and wide distribution of the whole library.
Obviously it's gotten harder over the years, the PS5 jailbreaks do exist so that means there's a vector for dumping games that were only ever distributed digitally (at least ones released up to the point where the jailbreaks got patched).
I own a Nintendo Switch, and I've noticed that in the Nintendo store, old games regularly go on sale for in the ballpark of 80% off. Does that happen in the PS store?
Except it really is. I don't see how businesses don't understand how this sort of anti-customer predatory behavior, MBA stuff, is directly driving reduced sales. The PS5, for instance, has only managed 96 million sales. For contrast the PS2 managed 160 million sales to a smaller market with much fiercer competition.
And I'm one of those tens of millions opting out. The PS2 felt like a great consumer-focused value. Modern consoles feel like opting in to get kicked in the balls and squeezed for every single penny they can get out of you.
The reason modern consoles aren't selling 300million+ units is because of myopia. And the worst part is that it's a vicious cycle. They see their sales shrinking so the penny pinchers and MBAs get even nastier squeezing the ever-shrinking userbase even more resulting in less sales meaning they need to squeeze those that remain even harder and so on.
At seemingly no point is anybody asking 'Hey why do our sales keep falling even though the potential market's way larger and the competition is pretty meh?' I guess that doesn't look as good on a powerpoint slide as trying to kill the used game market and pretending it will have no knock-on effects.
Gamers are notorious for accepting whatever abuse game companies and studios want to inflict, and then keep buying and buying. All the horrible anti-consumer technologies and business practices from DRM to games that are released unfinished, to kernel-level anti-cheats and rootkits, all are routinely done with video games because the industry knows gamers are fanatics and will put up with anything.
If gamers want to stop this, they need to stop rewarding these companies with their money.
99% of gamers who are mad about physical disk distribution going away will still buy the digitally distributed games.
The whole point is that they aren't accepting it. In terms of sales PS2 > PS4 > PS5. That alone is already a big issue but it becomes just comically bad when you consider that the world population is about 33% larger than during the PS2 era, gaming has become completely normalized, and that the competition in modern times is mediocre.
The next console is going to cost at least 1000 dollars, right? There's simply no way to sell hardware at 300 million units now. So I think their strategy is to abandon the mass market and sell to price unconscious consumers who will also pay more for games.
But what's the point of even releasing the next console? The current console generation has barely gotten started, and developers have barely taken advantage of the new hardware.
Maybe they need to look at releasing a cheaper console and making more quality games instead of constantly pushing so hard on graphics. Graphics help sales to an extent, but it's clearly not the whole story, given the popularity of the Wii or Switch. I think the people in charge no longer understand gaming, and are really struggling to produce games that will draw in large crowds again.
> So I think their strategy is to abandon the mass market and sell to price unconscious consumers who will also pay more for games.
Kinda seems like it. I'm curious to see what happens with that, because even people who so far have been willing to pay more will stop being customers if they can't produce an experience that's worth paying for. Maybe I'm in the minority, but the first-party PlayStation games all feel very samey to me.
For the ps6, they were already done with design and they'd need to let that go to waste to not put it out. I doubt it'll have many exclusives though - it's probably a ps5 pro pro thing.
But I'm also not sure they can sell a cheaper console. PS5 prices just rose and they'll rise again next year - so that level is already going to cost 800 dollars to consumers. You can't really sell hardware to anyone until ram prices come down it seems.
They could release a ps4 level console but I'm not sure it would be that cheap to source parts for... There are rumors of a handheld so that might be cheaper.
Basically console gaming is about to get impractical and they'll try and find a path to stay alive. That's my read.
I feel this in my bones and it's a great way to frame it. My last Playstation console was a PS2 and I've also opted out of recent generations. Historically, for me, one of the benefits of a console was that you could just pop the game in, and it would always work, simply and easily.
DRM, online checks, DLC that should have been part of the base game, digital-only games, etc have ruined all that, and if that's going to be the trend everywhere I'll just stick to a PC and Steam where I have a library of games built up over the decades.
I have a Switch and feel that Nintendo provided a decent experience on their recent systems, but with the advent of "game keys" or whatever they call it on the Switch 2, they've flipped to being even worse than the digital-only systems. At least Sony isn't (yet?) trying to sell you a license on a disc to try to fool you into thinking you own a physical copy.
in europe it's often cheaper to buy a game new in box from the retailer than from the PS Store. Not for long maybe. I will mourn the loss of physical games as they are such a big part of console experience
Off topic, XKCD should put the original publication date on the page. This one references specific years, and I could tell it's from 2009 after thinking about it, but doesn't hit the same way.
Yes stupid for shareholders and until the EU comes in and saves the day again this will continue.
There's something to be said for creating a near monopoly and also having the ability to digitally revoke someones right to use something they purchased legally, which we'll see more of.
> To illustrate why this is stupid, I will furnish two links to purchase Dark Souls 3 (PS4, 2016)
> Ebay, to buy: $11 + shipping[0]
> PS Store, to rent: $60[1]
Yeah, Sony is stupid to be leaving money on the table like that. Lucky for us, we live in a market system that we can trust to optimize for maximum consumer benefit (like Sony is doing here). It's our revealed choice that we want to pay more for old games.
> Yeah, Sony is stupid to be leaving money on the table like that
Are they though? Console sales have been dropping. It's only money left on the table if people are also purchasing consoles & games in the same quantities. How many people are just not buying these games because they are digital only?
TBH though, I think the ship has sailed a long time ago. Many games with physical media aren't really playable without downloadable updates anyway. Another reason the modern gaming experience has gotten worse.
Although it's just anecdata, after spending $600 on the console, I certainly was dismayed to find 10-year old games only being sold at their original prices. Surely they should at least track inflation?
Perhaps Sony could add an optional tipping screen before digital checkout for the good customers.
> Although it's just anecdata, after spending $600 on the console, I certainly was dismayed to find 10-year old games only being sold at their original prices. Surely they should at least track inflation?
Honestly, Sony should just retroactively bill consumers for inflation. Since $60 in 2016 is worth almost $89 today, they should charge all the people who bought the game back then a $29 price adjustment. It's the the only fair thing to do for.
If consumers don't like that option, an alternative can be a perpetual $5/year subscription that additional provides in-game stickers.
To play devil's advocate here, imagine a world where the exact opposite has occurred: physical media (CDs specifically) is the norm, and there's no DRM, so the raw data can be copied right off of it. In this world, scalpers scoop up all available inventory of physical media from local retailers, consumers pay a premium to them for the original product, the scalpers sell cheaper copies where the game binary has been modified to insert advertisements or mine cryptocurrency, out of the woodwork appears a cottage industry of companies offering services to modify game binaries and connect them to the ad networks and crypto exchanges. The scalper gets a cut, the gamer gets a cheaper game, everyone is happy.
I don't own a PS5, I do own a PS4 however and still buy physical copies of games - some of which of late have been secondhand from CeX - because 1. I don't like renting content, 2. I hate DRM, 3. physical copies are harder to censor.
Sony recently expunged copies of movies people had bought, so I honestly don't trust them do to the same with games.
Also, they announced the closure of the PS3 store, so that's even less reason to trust that I won't be able to reobtain the games I've bought digitally in the future...
Though you have a physical copy of the game, I don't discount a future where a console refuses to load a physical copy of the game because DRM impedes it. Much like when short-lived TLS certificates expire on their own, even by being offline.
Physical copies of games have in their EULA that the game is licensed to you, so theoretically they could still disable it.
Precedent? BlackBerry phones refused to connect to WiFi if you didn't pay for your mobile data plan. It became a 2G brick.
With this news, I have to wonder how much longer bluray will live.
Will we continue seeing new bluray releases of movies and TV shows for decades, or are their days numbered?
The loss of console gaming presumably removes a guaranteed revenue source that was keeping Bluray pressing plants alive.
Sales of DVDs and Bluray have been declining for years [1][3]. Some people have been excited pushing the news that UHD bluray sales increased in 2025, [2] but that ignores the fact that the total optical sales still dropped.
The PC burners/readers are disappearing. We had like ASUS, LG and Pioneer manufacturing. Pioneer had thrown in the towel last year (they were heads above the best in quality). I think ASUS might be gone as well. LG's drives are super hit or miss and I wouldn't be surprised if they give it up eventually.
This is probably due to the fact that they relied on Intel SGX security which has been busted wide open and itself been discontinued by Intel so instead of redesigning the security model, just depreciate the entire format on PC.
I don't think there is that much of a market left for set top players either.
Of all the companies you'd think are committed to the format, it would be Sony right?
Well they currently list one model of set top player on their website and it is the same design since at least the pandemic(when I bought my player). The SKu has changed since then but after looking at the differences, the only design update they have done in those ~6 years is upgraded menu software and removing built-in smart or networking features.
8K hasn't taken off as far as I know but eventually it might and right now there is no transition path to that for physical media.
> With this news, I have to wonder how much longer bluray will live.
I hope that physical media sticks around. DVDs and Blu-rays often include something that digital releases don't: director's commentaries, "making of" featurettes, and other extras.
For me, it adds a whole new layer of fun to movies I already like.
The heyday of commentary tracks and extras was long ago, over a decade ago. Except for a few boutique labels like Criterion, distributors found that adding such extra features often wasn’t worth their while in the face of declining physical media sales. So, increasingly one just got the film and little else.
I am very annoyed by this with the recent surprise smash hit of the movie 'Obsession'. This is a new director made popular by his devoted fan base and they just announced the blueray. One director commentary, a tiny 'featurette' and then just the film.
I remember back in the heyday of physical media(2010s) directors like Edgar Wright took curation of physical media extremely seriously: Multiple commentaries by not only the director but with the cast, production crew, sound designers etc. Deleted scenes, multiple featurettes and even picture slideshows.
I wonder how much the design of Blueray menus is hampered by the tech choices used in the format. DVDs were video files that repeated with tiny overlays that the player would just draw. Bluray seem to be entire Java applications of which most studios develop one generic version and reuse for every release.
I can't imagine content owners wanting the physical media to continue any longer than they can get away with. The control they have from digital only must make them feel so powerful. At least as long as everyone continues to buy into their DRM systems.
I've recently looked into purchasing a dedicated 4K Blu-ray player to start building a disc collection again. I'm assuming there's some pretty decent deals in the used bins now. One by one, I keep canceling my streaming subscriptions. At some point, that physical media will be the only thing left. Makes me feel like a prepper of a different sort
I do this. I'll buy used disks and rip them to a personal media server. It works great. A friend actually created an eBay bot which monitors listings of disks he wants and will automatically buys them.
The ripping part is a bit annoying and time-consuming though. Ironically, it would probably be easier to buy a disk then download a file rather than ripping.
I've been doing this as well. Occasionally I'll have a disc that fails to rip for some reason (maybe my drive is more sensitive to defects than my player is, or there's some stupid copy protection scheme), and then I'll torrent it. Torrenting is always easier and faster, though it's hard to find special features this way.
> Ironically, it would probably be easier to buy a disk then download a file rather than ripping.
This is basically what mp3.com tried to do: treat the physical (music) disc as a license key that gives you access to a digital copy online. Sadly, the courts did not agree with their interpretation of copyright law.
Why not just get everything on the high seas for free, instead of paying for used-bin stuff which is cheap but still costs something? I’m a huge cinephile with a collection on my hard drives of ripped Blu-ray and DVD images, a number running now into the four figures, and I have almost never paid for a physical disc; I own something like 6 that are in a box somewhere.
That's part of what I was thinking. The idea of digital-only must be very attractive for content owners, so I don't think they will put much effort into preventing that outcome.
Collecting is going strong, though. My husband collects physical media, and media books, including a booklet and a nice cover, sell very well. As are special editions of more mainstream movies. Give people something extra and they will gladly buy it. I'd have expected them to go down that path, sell nice steelbooks, media books with an included art book and so on. Add a blu ray with interviews about the development process and so on. I'd pay good money for that and others would as well. Even if they sell the console only with an external disk drive.
Hilariously, DVD production could potentially outlive Blu-Ray discs, since DVDs are still popular enough 30 years later, and surpass the sales of Blu-Ray movies.
Why is that? Vinyl has some unique characteristics. But as far as I’m aware, blu-ray is just a storage format for bits, so other than the box art, what is compelling about a blu-ray pressing?
Ever compare a Blu-ray to the same content over streaming? It's not even close. Unlike vinyl records, Blu-ray is vastly superior in quality to alternatives.
In case you're asking "why", it's because your "4K" stream is compressed to hell and back. Your home internet connection doesn't even have the bandwidth to stream the quality of a BR.
But also the reality is that most people have their devices connected through a shitty wi-fi connection and may be effectively limited to 50 or even less mbps, specially if you consider the unpredictability that comes with it.
True. Plus the big streaming services' business model now is low quality content produced in house or with cheap royalties, that people put on in the background. They might have a prestige show or two, but that's just a hook to get you to subscribe, they'd much prefer you watch the cheap stuff.
> Your home internet connection doesn't even have the bandwidth to stream the quality of a BR.
This has not been true for most people for a while now. Even the high end of 4K blue rays tops out around 100 Mbps, which is achievable on pretty much any broadband connection.
Many of vinyl's unique characteristics are severe drawbacks compared to digital disks. I see a lot of kids collecting CDs instead—cheaper, lighter, easier to maintain, you can find cars that play them pretty easily, you can rip them losslessly, more hardware to play them, etc. Plus you can a lot of the same benefits of album art, lyrics, etc.
Blu-Rays also have special features, which most streaming platforms don't offer (I think largely except for iTunes).
Having it, physically. It’s harder for companies to play silly games like put the media into a vault, take it off their streaming platforms for tax reasons, etc… I started collected physical blu rays when HBO randomly took a million things off its platform so that it could do accounting tricks.
I want to support artists who make content I like, but I also want control over my media library. Physical media is the best way to do this.
Can't end soon enough. I hate the CD/DVD format. Very prone to damage. One scratch and the entire disk can be unreadable.
I stopped buying them about 20 years ago when this became apparent to me. Never bought a Blueray player or disk, that was a scam from day one: buy all your content again.
Paying every month for streaming is a nuisance, but not as much as sitting down to watch a movie and the disk won't play. Then trying to clean it, praying it was just a fingerprint.
I hardly ever watch a movie more than once anyway. Once I've seen it, I've seen it. I come out way ahead at $5 for a streaming view than buying for $30+ (or whatever they cost today, I don't even know).
I have been collecting many used CDs and DVDs for some ten years - some of them 15+ years old, some of them are covered in scratches and they still work pretty well. Clearly, you are:
a. Spreading lies
b. Exaggerating your experience
Now, Will they last forever? Of course not, but they are mine!
I saw my first Dolby Vision Blu-ray and immediately started a Blu-Ray collection. The Blu-ray player on the PS5 is fine, but a nice dedicated player from Sony blows it away.
I would pay for my favorite albums on Blu-ray too. I wish more artists released their entire discography on a really well produced Blu-ray. NIN would be perfect for this. So many Halos, so many videos, all in release order. A real release of Purest Feeling?
I just pre-ordered the 4K UHD remaster of The Sopranos, and while on the Gruv site I saw another UHD remaster of a movie I enjoy and ordered it. I am excited to experience this (haven't watched physical media in forever), but I was planning on using my PS5. My research also confirms that standalone players are legit, but they are more expnsive than I figured! I guess I'll give one a try and hope this isn't another addiction...
it typically offers better video processing and upscaling, more accurate color reproduction, cleaner gradients, and superior HDR handling (including dynamic tone mapping on some models). Many also support Dolby Vision from UHD Blu rays, which the PS5 does not.
It won't show on a bad screen that much, but a dedicated player will squeeze out more of the disc.
No upscaling as it's not necessary. (But better players have better 1080p to 4k upscaling too, as the algorithms are more sophisticated, e.g. edge-adaptive scaling, temporal filtering, etc.)
First, the player performs MPEG-4 HEVC decoding, reconstructing full video frames from heavily compressed data.
Once decoded, the signal is still not in a display-ready format.
UHD Blu-rays are almost always encoded in 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, meaning luma (brightness) has full resolution, but chroma (color) is spatially reduced. so one of the first steps in the pipeline is chroma upsampling (chroma reconstruction). After that, the player applies color space conversion and output formatting, usually converting to a HDMI-friendly format like YCbCr 4:2:2 or 4:4:4.
HDR handling is sometimes done on the player.
The tv is doing a last stage processing that is fine tuned for it's display like contrast enhancement.
There's a bit of misinformation here. At the end of the day, a blu-ray player is reading information from the disc and passing it onto the TV digitally - one player or another are going to do that identically. One can't have 'better color' or anything like that.
HOWEVER, there is an exception: Feature support. For example, not all blu-ray players support 4K blu rays. Not all players support Dolby Vision.
If you try to play a 4K blu ray disc in a non-4K blu ray player, it won't function at all (won't read). If you try to play a disc using Dolby Vision in a player that doesn't support it, it will fall back to HDR10.
But assuming 2 players both support the features a disc uses, the end output will be identical.
There's also upscaling, which some players can do differently.
Even if Sony keeps a token factory or two open to produce blu-rays, I'd imagine we'll see fewer and fewer new releases. Maybe we'll only see them as part of collector's sets that have enough margin to afford a cut of the more limited supply.
This feels like the beginning of the death spiral for blu-ray. Sales aren't going to go up enough for it to be worth it keep factories going, much less spin up new ones.
Years ago I did a podcast[0] on physical media and hypothesized UHD would be the last physical movie format (and was shocked that it was even a thing).
The next two years are probably going to be a mess as collectors snatch everything up annd inventory gets cleared out.
UHD bluray isn't really a new physical format. It's the exact same physical format as regular bluray. They didn't change a thing except move some previously optional parts of the bluray spec (like three layer discs, and 33GB per layer) to being compulsory.
I don't think we have ever seen something like it before. A new media format that breaks backwards compatibility, yet uses the exact same physical medium as the previous version. Some people did attempt it with HD movies on DVD, but the attempt failed so badly I don't think it even counts.
Its very existence was a very strong signal Bluray would be the last optical disc format. And the launch of the PS5 without a new optical confirmed it.
But is there enough of a market for blu-rays of newer western releases in Japan to keep the entire production and distribution chain alive around the rest of the world?
They won't be releasing new Blu Rays for decades. Outside of collectors, why would they? Unless there is a hidden market for the discs elsewhere it's not worth it
I don’t know the stats but I would guess more people have DVD players then Blu-Ray, so it makes sense for libraries to rather offer DVDs. DVDs is also one of these things that is good enough. The jump in quality between DVD and Blu-Ray is very unnoticeable (when fully immersed) compared to e.g. between VHS and DVD (or even between vinyl and CD).
Well, if Nintendo and Microsoft go the same route (and sadly, I see that being almost inevitable at some point), that's probably the end of my interest in gaming as a whole. I generally refuse to 'rent' or 'license' things on a temporary basis, and have decided in this generation that every game I'll get for Switch 2 will be a physical game on cart version, without exception.
And the reasons for that are pretty simple. I like being able to resell games when done with them. I like being able to lend them to friends, or play them on as many consoles as I want. I like the idea of having something that companies (generally) can't remove due to licensing changes or an always online requirement.
This sort of change just feels like yet another step towards constantly renting rather than owning, or streaming games and media without any control over how or when you can use it.
Even that Nintendo Switch 2 Game-Key Card implementation still works better for parent’s game reselling use case (for a limited time) than outright removing the physical media option as Sony is doing.
From the link you posted:
“Game-key cards are different from regular game cards, because they don’t contain the full game data. Instead, the game-key card is your "key" to downloading the full game to your system via the internet.
After it’s downloaded, you can play the game by inserting the game-key card into your system and starting it up like a standard physical game card. An internet connection is only required when you launch the game for the first time. After this, the game can be started even without an internet connection. However, like regular physical software, the game-key card must be inserted into the system in order to play the game. A Nintendo Account is not required to download the game data.”
So lending and reselling game-key cards is still possible in the same way as physical media… at least until Nintendo’s servers stop serving the game, heh.
Unfortunately some switch 2 games are only available as digital download codes (e.g. Split Fiction) even though Xbox and PS5 physical versions are real discs. For now.
Counter-argument: I have a Steam account associated with a day 1 purchase of Half Life 2 (so, 25 years or so). Every game I've ever purchased is still available for me to download, while I lost probably 50% or more of my physical games collection.
If I'm renting those games, it sure seems like a good deal.
I do appreciate that console online market places have not historically been as well managed as Steam.
But also, GoG exists: you can buy a PC game and get a DRM-free download that you can play offline and store forever.
A lot of people - rightly - pilloried Stadia for requiring a subscription and forcing gamers to "buy" games. It turns out Stadia was 1.5 generations ahead of its time.
My last unit was a PS2 many years ago. Back then you could bring your disc over to a friends house and play on their PS2. Is that still a thing people do?
> Sony's announcement follows Rockstar's announcement that Grand Theft Auto 6 will come with a download code in a box rather than a physical disc. It's a move that most notably stamps out second-hand reselling of a game.
This is the big point for me. If one buys a digital PlayStation game there's virtually no easy way to transfer it to another owner or sell it like one could do in past console generations. There will always be modding and ways to play game dumps, but it limits that level of "ownership" to those technically inclined to make it work.
> There will always be modding and ways to play game dumps
There won't because advances in defensive cybersecurity have made it so that software exploits are extremely rare (if they exist at all), and modern chips contain hardware defenses against electrical attacks like voltage glitching.
There are already more game dumps and mods than anyone can play in single lifetime. There are plenty games without DRM and always-online protections in GOG alone.
I think they mean on console, which has become increasingly difficult, there are a number of PS5s that can do it but that’s only because those were at older firmware versions as far as I know. The majority of the consoles are incapable of that unless other vulnerabilities are found.
Discs are less convenient so people have slowly moved to digital sales. This worked even better for console manufacturers, cheaper to drop that disc reader, and the second hand market is effectively dead which increases new game sales.
The side-effect most people didn't consider is that you never really own a digital copy. And the most relevant part is that you cannot transfer/sell a digital copy. For everything else around ownership I know I can count on Sony to still screw it up even with discs, like disabling a disc game with some online checks.
I wouldn't think that the copy of some movie Netflix is streaming to me will be 60-100GB over the duration of the movie. Not to mention when their services have issues and you're watching 5-10 minutes of low quality content until it settles and snaps up to full (streaming) quality.
Most people really don't care, which is a shame. The sheer quality difference between a 4k digital movie and a 4k bluray is astounding. Hell, oftentimes a standard bluray looks better despite the lower resolution since it isn't being compressed
A 4K movie uncompressed would be something like two or three terabytes depending on the format. I think Arri are the only cinema cameras that can even shoot uncompressed or losslessly compressed, the rest shoot lossy compressed video in their native raw formats.
Theres no technical reason one should look better than the other.
Both should use multipass ahead of time compression with a rate control algorithm, and both should have enough slack streaming bandwidth to handle complex scenes with buffering
Uncompressed 24-bit 1080p running at 24 FPS requires 1.192 Gbit/s, or 0.149 GByte/s. So a 25 GB (single-layer) blu-ray has enough space for a whopping 167.8 seconds of uncompressed 1080p video running at 24 FPS. You can double that with a dual-layer blu-ray, and there are more corners you can cut, but I don't think you'll fit your movie in there.
Video is really big. Compression was needed to make it even vaguely possible unless your quality was in the toilet.
HD-DVDs were smaller, so they were more compressed.
I don’t think that you guys should be debating compressed vs uncompressed, but lossy compression vs lossless compression. Your math seems to derive from a naive storage format.
Blu-ray is lossy too. All video codecs of note that aren't for professionals are lossy, so the point mostly still stands. Lossless compression doesn't go very far when it comes to video.
An uncompressed 24 bit 1080p image is just under 6 MB. If you save it as a compressed PNG, you cut that down to roughly 2.5 MB. Now, PNG compression isn't very efficient, and you can probably do some interframe magic if you really wanted to (cf lossless h264), but the whole exercise is mostly futile, since even if you cut your bitrate down to an eighth, you're still looking at, like, 20-ish minutes of runtime with 25 gigabytes.
Meanwhile, blu-ray looks as good as it does at an average of 25-30 mbit/s (0.03 gbit/s) (while UHD blu-ray even more so, with a better codec, so even more detail is preserved). The compression used saves so much space the trade-off is obviously worth it unless you're a production company making an actual movie, where every detail counts.
I just looked up the compression rate of FFV1 because I never thought about this. It’s apparently 4x. More would be possible, but increase computational requirements.
Another use cases seems to be archival of historical footage.
What's kind of an annoying side effect of this is that you have all this fancy new display tech, like quantum dot LED (marketing term, but w/e), or OLED, but it's all pointless because you're just watching it with crappy compression, negating the quality gains.
The football World Cup 2026 is being broadcast in 1080p with washed out colors. Yet every shop was advertising 4K OLED for the best experience of watching the matches.
One of the EU's backstop "Fuck Trump" options is to stop enforcing America's IP rights.
Maybe this USB stick full of MCU movies isn't the highest possible quality and two of the Thor movies are missing for some reason, however it cost less than €20, so who cares ? Oh it's illegal? Well my government said they don't give a shit about that until you get rid of the orange lunatic
In a world where American media companies are also trying to fuck over consumers that sort of action could probably get a rotting corpse re-elected in a landslide, that's one of the reasons it's on the backstop threat list - dry policy responses don't connect with voters, but "make as many copies of their stuff as you like" is incredibly popular.
It's a weird trajectory to see because with the music industry people have started catching on and either support sites that offer more durable forms of ownership or have straight up reverted to physical ownership.
It's from a 2016 essay. I'm not sure it was ever only a joke. I didn't even perceive it as a joke back then (unless you wanted to joke about companies being knobheads). It was already clear by then that that was the direction they wanted to go.
Adobe Creative Cloud became the only option for new Adobe software in 2013, 3 years before that essay. Sure, Adobe is on the forefront of being knobheads, but still.
Closing the online store for older systems simultaneously with announcing the dropping of physical media leaves an interesting question for the future. Even if you’ve never bought an online PS3 or Vita game, you’ll still be able to use the systems for physical games. Presumably once the PS6 store is gone, any console is just an ornament if you don’t have access to an account with games already purchased (and how long will the download servers stay up anyway? What is the foreseeable future?).
I was having this discussion with my 9 year old yesterday. He mentioned that a friend had Rocket League on their Switch 2 and "it didn't even need a game card". I told him that anything without a physical card can be taken away, the company that made it can decide to take it back or to stop letting it work. Compared that to my old DS which he found along with game cards for Lego Star Wars and Scribblenauts that still work ~20 years later.
I think he "got" it. He was certainly annoyed at the idea that something purchased could just be taken back. Maybe it'll stick and he'll be better able to understand why I'll push back on a new PlayStation or any digital only games.
I mean Rocket League is game focused on matchmaking through an online platform. Its main game types will stop working when that platform goes away. That's just the kind of game it is, its not like playing Lego Star Wars at all.
I see playing a game like Rocket League more in lines of having a membership to club to play a certain game rather than owning a copy of the game to play alone, forever. The club will eventually go away, that's just the nature of such things.
I do agree its a good lesson to teach your kids about the limits and issues of digital "ownership" though.
theoretically, the playstations are the most vulnerable since they run static versions of a FreeBSD derived system. the xbox doesn't really need to be jailbroken and the switch line is nearly impossible
Sorry, I should've specified soft mods. iirc there's only been 1 softmod for the switch that was patched out extremely early on before we knew about it
Werent early versions of the Switch 1 jail broken pretty fast and people were dumping switch 1 roms online to play in emulators?
I don’t follow this stuff too closely but I thought that I saw people playing the sequel to Breath of the Wild on PCs to get acceptable frame rates when it came out.
Yeah, I should've specified softmods. There was a hardware bug in the launch switches SOC that wasn't patched until a year or so after the consoles launch
Shit, they tried a while ago with a lot of pushback. I hope they don't. I love my vita, and while realistically anybody playing one nowadays has it hacked and can get games from wherever they please, it sucks that the only official way is going the way of the dodo
This is why I will not be buying a PlayStation 6. I've had my Steam account for 20 years (21 come October) and I can still download every single thing I've ever bought there. Why should I invest in buying PS6 games when they're gonna be made obsolete by Sony?
If I am being a bit pedantic. Yes you can still download your old games, but they will likely be different from the original release. Grand Theft Auto games are known for dropping songs from the soundtrack due to licensing.
If you have Vice City on DVD and install it you can still enjoy Michael Jackson. Not with the Steam version.
As much as I like Steam and dislike Sony (quite a bit in both cases), I will point out that while you can still download every single thing you've bought on Steam, there's no guarantee that it will run on a modern PC. A handful of my past Steam purchases don't. Consoles still hold the advantage of being a tightly defined target platform and a game written targeting a console is compatible with it indefinitely.
Why would anyone “buy” movies from PlayStation. That’s not their business, I would never have expected them to be in it for the long haul, just like MS did a rug pull on this a few years ago didn’t they?
Why not? Maybe people already have an account there with payment set up, the console hooked up to the TV and soundbar and don't want do sign up somewhere else?
Furthermore, Sony Pictures is huge, so selling movies is absolutely part of Sony's business as a whole.
Convenience? Maybe a belief the media would be accessible for a long time, versus the ever-changing catalog available from streaming services?
Consumers are lured into walled-gardens all the time - consoles, app stores, hardware. Where would you suggest someone purchase a digital license for a movie?
I have a PS4pro; technically I also already own a PS5 (kid-brother arrangement; not currently in my possession). When he gets his PS6, I'll get my PS5 back... then still keep the PS4 (always been offline: RDR2; GTA5; &c).
If Sony doesn't offer GTA6 on disc, offline: I'll sell the PS5, too. I just got a 5070Ti, so it's probably back to PC-MasterRace I'll go...
Reasons like this [Sony's 2028 disc-stop] are exactly why I won't be purchasing a PS6. At least (in Sony's defense) they're telling us oldtimers about this now, as opposed to on the day of [stopping disc retail sales].
This is an opportunity for MS to make a contrarian bet and keep supporting physical media. IMO they will benefit from acquiring gamers who want to keep using physical media.
Though, I think they will follow what Sony is doing.
This will hopefully backfire. As soon as there are no more physical copies of games available, Sony will run into the same situation that Apple is currently, which will make them a Gatekeeper in the EU. That will eventually mean that they need to open their platform for third-party-vendors. But, yeah. It will be bad for a few years at least, I'm afraid.
That doesn’t matter. It’s about the end-users perspective in that case. You can sell physical copies in physical stores or online on competitive pricing. The main point is that the customer has a choice. As soon as the physical discs vanish, they won’t. And that’s where gatekeeping starts.
> They'll be forced to embed alternative stores in the PlayStation.
Steam Summer sales on a PlayStation? I want that today.
If this decision somehow ends up with Steam and Proton for PlayStation, it will be well worth it. Gaben, please get some lawyers to write to the EU posthaste, and start porting Proton to iOS & PlayStation
In contrast, Nintendo's idea to sell physical games that are essentially transferrable keys seems like a much smarter compromise.
Part of the appeal for the Switch and Switch 2 is the stability of their resale market. It's easier to pay for a new game when you know you can get 50% of your money back on the used market.
Sony wouldn’t see any benefit from switching to game key discs. Nintendo introduced them to save on manufacturing costs, but game key discs wouldn’t give Sony any additional market or reduce costs any; they’d only shrink the physical market further.
They also changed the way DRM works for digital games purchased after March 2026. It used to be a permanent license at purchase time and is now a temporary license that requires online check for the duration of the refund period with the claimed reason of combating “refund fraud”.
It's pretty hard for me to believe that going through the trouble to set up an entirely new Playstation account, buy a game, refund it, and have the dedication to stay offline forever to keep the game could possibly have been a widespread behavior. It will obviously be easy for them to ratchet that into online check required every 30 days once the current thing is out of the news cycle: https://kotaku.com/playstation-drm-ps4-ps5-support-30-days-o...
Most games with retail copies drop in price soon after the hype window is over. They stay full launch retail price in the PSN store unless there is a "sale". Anti-consumerism at its finest.
I wonder if that's because there's a downward price pressure on physical inventory because it needs to get liquidated to free up physical space for new inventory.
That's certainly a factor, especially if demand was less than predicted, stores don't want to hold on to stock that's not selling, distributors and manufacturers don't want it returned. Better for everyone to reduce the price and sell the product.
Microsoft just tried a generation too early. They could have gotten away with it this gen, and assuming 2028 will be start of next gen it looks like next gen it will go over without a fight.
I remember having a goal of eventually publishing on a Nintendo and/or PlayStation console, when I first got in to game dev. Now they've both gotten so far away from gaming as I knew it that I would be embarrassed to publish on either company's consoles.
Now my focus is to be able to publish high quality games that run well on those anbernic/miyoo/ayn-style handheld devices. Those things are actually priced for consumers and the ones that have card slots provide a method for physical media. And of course, using those as a floor, the games could always upscale for more powerful machines.
I'm just so tired of this continual march toward investor appeasement at the expense of the consumers. They're games. They're entertainment. For people to play. Not how I want them to play them; how people want to play them. People shouldn't have to have an account to play them. They shouldn't have to invest a month of rent to play them. They shouldn't have to worry about me revoking their ability to play them. It's just so frustrating to see how far we've gotten from "drop in a quarter and enjoy". The industry is in sad shape and getting sadder by the day.
I wonder if piracy will eventually fill for physical releases of movies and games. It might be a fun project to make an online store game work on blue ray with nice packaging...
In a few years Sony executives will be wondering why a portion of their consumer base decided to prioritize other forms of entertainment. I can speak for myself in that I’ve never upgraded past the PS3, and I feel no regrets about it.
I personally see no reason to buy anything more than a PS4. I have a PS3 and it plays all the same kinds of games I'd want to play on a 4 or 5, with similar graphical fidelity. I have a 4, but only really have used it to play a remake of a game I can already play on the 3. I also have a vita which is used for indie games since that thing has nearly every indie game you'd ever want to play available (either officially or via homebrew)
They've also been pushing digital-only PS5s and PS5 Pro so there are fewer reasons to get a disk if you have no disk drive. They have created the problem that they are "solving."
PS4 is a great system, but I feel it may be my last Sony console. Steam Deck/Steam Machine will probably become the king of the household, as I don't see video games ever really leaving my life.
The PS5 is great. We have a PS5 and PS5 Pro, both with disk drives (internal or external). But I really hate this policy. My brother comes over regularly to watch my pets, and he can simply bring a couple of his PS5 games over and play them rather than rebuying them and digitally downloading them. This breaks the in-person social aspect of gaming and game sharing that we've become accustomed to for decades.
That will put them in direct competition with Steam, though.
Suddenly their cheaper console will result in way higher cost for the lifetime of the console.
Killing the used market is a very bad idea. Remember what happened with xbox?
When buying a gaming console, I imagine folks think more about the upfront cost ($600 for PS5 vs $1,050 for steam machine) as opposed to the total cost of ownership.
The steam machine may be cheaper in the long run once you consider:
* Playing PlayStation games online costs $11/month.
* PlayStation games tend to be more expensive than steam games.
Steam isn't the Steam machine. If somebody's on a budget a PC you could get for a couple hundred is way more than enough to run nearly all games on Steam; $600 could get you a beast of a machine. I don't really know who the market for the Steam Machine is, because that price is kind of insane. I suppose we'll see how things look in a year or two there.
Where can you get a new gaming "beast of a machine" for $600? In the past you could build a reasonable gaming machine for $600 but parts are drastically more expensive today.
If you go to microcenter and look for gaming PCs, their cheapest option is $800 [1]. PC Part Picker's entry level build is $780 [2].
The only option I found with these constraints is this computer from Walmart with a GPU released in 2017 and a CPU released in 2013 [3] (This is not a recommendation for this listing. Please don't buy it).
> That will put them in direct competition with Steam, though. Suddenly their cheaper console will result in way higher cost for the lifetime of the console.
...funny that so many people were complaining about the recent Steam Machine not being worth it compared to just getting a PS5; maybe now it's not that bad of a deal after all, huh?
It still costs double a PlayStation, but yeah, I just bought one. I have kids and a big Steam library, so I am actually saving money with that over a console
I feel the physical disc died a long time ago, most games require heavy patching to fix bugs or download new content, or even in some cases download whole portions of the game, so they rely on PS servers to even function anyway. The only advantage they have is you can sell them or buy used.
I know there's a strong desire for physical media, but games are not the same as movies or music and haven't been for a long time.
Guess I’m throwing my PS5 out the window and going to PC. This war on physical media is ridiculous. Pretty soon they’re going to require us to buy the console but rent the controllers for the very low price of $79.99 a month.
Steam games exist on physical media that players have some control over: I can copy my Steam data directory across PCs/Steam Deck, I would not be able to do that on a PlayStation.
Sure, I can't resell my Steam games, but the openness of the PC platform has advantages over closed consoles. Valve can't brick old games the way Sony can - a new computer in 2046 will be able to play single-player games backed-up from Steam, not so much for consoles.
Valve have shown themselves to be reasonably trustworthy unlike say, Sony and Microsoft. If there are no disks then there is no point in consoles in my view, they're just worse computers.
Steam only exists because Valve forced players to install it, force an online activation, and permanently bind their retail copies of Half-Life 2 to a Steam account. They also forced patching which meant in an era of dialup you couldn't play your single player game for hours, and needed to be connected every 30 days or your game would stop working.
None of the console manufacturers pulled that shit, that Valve gets a pass is wild to me.
plus, nothings stopping you from distributing a physical PC game. Heck, iirc steam still supports it. Even if it didn't, you could still buy a physical PC anyway since they can just have an exe, flatpak/snap/appimage, or dmg
Steam normalized the loss of resale rights on PC long before the consoles caught up. Younger people don't even realize it's a right that prior generations gave up.
Yes, and it's a tragedy that people have given up so much for the shallow convenience of having a shiny launcher and not having to figure out clicking on setup.exe.
You have to be very dense to think AAA video game devs have some woke agenda and not just knee-jerk reaction to market changes. There are plenty of games for you to goon to.
Steam has existed for an eternity compared to any console specific game store. It's not great that you can't resell what you have on Steam, but at least you get to 'keep' it.
I hope for the EU to come after Sony. Before you could argue that you could buy games as a disc and just play them. It of course was a monopoly before, but now it is pretty clear
We will own the games we purchase digitally if we change the laws to say that we own them. We've reached the point where politicians are talking about this issue, and I suppose support for copyright reform will only continue to grow.
TBH, 100% offline gaming has been problematic since day-one patches became the norm in the PS3 era. Sure, you might be play version 1.0 of the game from the disc, but often the experience was pretty compromised without the patch, often very buggy, or sometimes even features missing.
And the PS5 is meant to be able to play digitally downloaded while disconnected (at least the ones you own, not the PS+ games). It's just the implementation is little buggy, it sometimes breaks for some people and you get a bunch of vocal people complaining about how it doesn't work.
So IMO, you aren't losing much there. The digital-only experience isn't that different from needing to have internet to download a day-one patch.
It's the used game sales that are the biggest loss from this move.
> I'm curious whether Nintendo will be following the same path.
Probably, they're already heavily invested in digital-only games, e.g. virtual console, or selling game boxes with just a download code.
But this goes back years already, physical copies of their games have remained expensive for ages. Relatively modern and/or very common "everyone has these" games like various pokemon games going for full price to 2-3x that.
Gaming is in a really tough spot right now, and it's not being made easier by the drain AI has put on chip and RAM prices. It's absolutely insane that Sony and Microsoft have had to raise prices on their years-old consoles.
They want this even more than they want $100 games. Rockstar not shipping discs for GTA6 and PlayStation ending disc production is the perfect two pronged approach.
Honestly gamers have been stomaching this for decades with Steam so Sony wants in on some of that sweet sweet action as well.
I don't think this is really comparable at all. Sony is trying to kill off the used game market in hope of being able to coerce people into paying more. Steam is basically one giant used game market in that you get stuff constantly for 50-90% off.
And pirating stuff off Steam is generally extremely trivial, so it's a largely coercion-free business-customer relationship, and I think that's a large part of why they're doing so well. People like to support businesses that treat them well. And for those that don't? Well I think there's a reason that video game piracy is plummeting, while film/media/streaming piracy is surging.
That ship sailed and was sunk many years ago. I'll educate my kid to play real games from decades ago, and if he really wants to rent games he can work his ass off to buy them.
Same reason I prefer GoG over Steam -- at least I can download the installers and store them, and there is no string attached.
Unlike Steam keys, there are no ways to distribute Playstation keys outside of Playstation platform. By removing retailers and second hand markets, what exactly would make Sony or any other publishers to continue offering any deep discounts on their products on a closed platform, especially when their biggest competitor Xbox has dropped the ball heavily.
I'm in the UK, and CeX is a great shop to trade in a game for store credit once I'm finished with it, then pickup whatever I want to play next. Most of the time I can completely cover the cost of the next game with the credit received from the trade, or use some store credit leftover from a previous visit!
When a Sony studio Insomniac Games were hacked and a lot of internal documents were leaked, there were statistics for Sony's first party titles and their sales stats and what the split was between physical and digital sales[0] and for some of the titles, they sold mostly physical compared to digital. Apologies for poor quality, couldn't find a better image
Due to the steam sales and deep discounting its easy to buy games on steam for much cheaper then the consoles. For console where a game may be £60 for several years, buying physical means you can resell. For anyone with a budget, it makes a huge difference on how many games you can play.
I wonder if this signals anything about Sony's attitude to blu-ray movies. Aside from games one of the reasons their consoles have sold well is because they've been excellent physical media players. The PS2 for DVDs and the PS3 onwards for blu-ray.
If I remember well PS3 was during the period where blu-ray lasers were production constrained and more expensive with Sony prioritizing their own devices, so the console was price and availability competitive against dedicated disc players by third parties. And the PS3 had pretty long term update/support. I'm fairly sure that had an impact on the financial side as it was in the era when console hardware was subsidized on the expectation they'd get a slice of game sales, except those consoles bought for primarily for movies didn't reimburse them so well.
I’m not sure if Sony has been pushing their video disc formats with PlayStations for a while. PS4 Pro was the “4K” upgrade over PS4, but didn’t support UHD Blu-Ray. And there’s been a disc drive-less PS5 since launch.
Stuff like Blu-Ray seems to be becoming a Laserdisc like enthusiasts niche system, I don’t think it’s been a big thing for Sony for a while.
I've reached an age where I don't actually buy games anymore, I just load up my wishlist with games and between Christmas, birthday and fathers day I get all the games I will care to play for the year. My wife, parents, extended family likes being able to buy me a physical gift, wrap it, and hand it to me. I understand that this is just getting rid of the disc and keeping the box, but pretty soon there's gonna be no box either, and I know my wife will hate the idea of just handing me a gift card on special days. I just hate how all physical products are evaporating.
I wonder why Sony or Microsoft don't try to 'game' the used market by becoming the used marketplace for virtual copies. They can charge a commission for every game that changes hands.
I'm sure they can think of some things to make new copies a differentiator such as DLC's and perks in game.
Also, 'new games' eventually get discounted as the title gets old. It's one way of keeping money in the game store ecosystem constantly changing hands.
I really don't understand their thinking here. Sure they want more money, I get that.
But 'physical media' is one of the reasons why a lot o people make a distinction between PC and console games. Removing this will make it easier for consumers to compare a PS5 to a Steam machine, and I don't think that is a good thing for Sony.
Never been happier that I've turned into a retro-gamer. This is more the result of being old than a principled stance, but never the less. Increasingly I don't view myself as actually owning anything that connects to the internet. Minecraft is delightful on my disconnected Xbox-360, thanks. Nobody can break it by forcing an update or shutting down a server.
This was bound to happen. I’ve long suspected the #1 reason physical games exist was to placate a few big retailers like Best Buy and Walmart and Target so they’d continue to carry the console.
Clearly that’s no longer necessary. Download-only retail boxes or gift cards or whatever are enough.
I know some people really care about physical releases, but I think the writing has been on the wall for years that this was coming.
I have a PlayStation and I exclusively buy my games via discs. On the other hand, these days I exclusively buy computer games via digital download (mostly via Steam). I have more consumer confidence that digital games on my computer will remain accessible vs games on my console, maybe because Sony controls the entire console ecosystem.
Interesting timing to announce this at around the same time as the PS3 digital store is discontinued signaling that digital only doesn't last as long as physical.
My old Nintendo Wii is modified with homebrew software that keeps alive some otherwise inaccessible features since Nintendo shut off their servers. I hope the community can do similar for newer consoles when they reach the end of their life.
The PSN store does have sales often and digital games can be up to 90% off even AAA titles. This news has me wondering how the supply of used physical copies drives game prices lower. It's possible that eliminating physical releases gives Sony the pricing power to eliminate sales, or at least cut back from the huge sales they do currently.
One of the major reasons I upgraded to ps5 was because it would also allow me to play blu-ray movies.
If the PS6 comes out with no disc player at all, not a chance I buy it.
Also, that's a definite middle finger to second hand and physical stores then ? Hoping MS will make a bet in the opposite direction (but I don't see it) and the players will follow..
Genuine question but is this why Gamestop was thinking about buying E-bay which ironically had some of the most greatest meme about "half cash, half stock" if someone remembers that in terms of the immense stupidity displayed in botching up the deal or the finances of it.
but what is the plan for shops like GameStop then if nobody buys or sells games anymore via offline shops. as you mentioned with Funko pops (and I had to search up with that), but they could perhaps transition to merchandise focused goods but I think that even within that online could have a valid competition?
> but what is the plan for shops like GameStop then if nobody buys or sells games anymore via offline shops
Bankruptcy.
They've already had to massively cut down after the first round of people switching to digital-only. I doubt they'll survive a digital-only world (maybe a rebrand will work? Or maybe they'll limp along on merch).
Ironic that you mention MS because also ironically, around the PS4 launch there was a lot of brouhaha about MS not allowing transfering games, while for the PS4 launch video they showed how easy it is to transfer games (just hand over a disk).
I hate it. I hate digital only games. I get that the numbers and reality are against my wishes but that doesn't make it any better. I want to unpack my console from storage in 20 years and play the games I bought for it even if the company or servers no longer exist.
I never understood why disc versions of current gent console exists at all. Don't @ me about internet speeds: even if game does come on a disc, day 1 patches got out of hand before this generation was launched or in works.
Exactly this. Today I can get a physical copy at release date for ~10 EUR cheaper than on the Playstation Store, then resell it for 3/4 of the price, or lend it to a friend easily.
Everything about digital-only is anti-consumer. Games will be more expensive with fewer and less important discount, the second-hand market will be dead, and so will be sharing games to friends so they can experience it for free.
Nintendo has implemented lending a digital game, but with arbitrary limits (you HAVE to be in physical proximity for the lending process, it lasts a maximum of two weeks, and you can lend 3 / borrow 1 game at a time). Sony and Microsoft don't let you do that.
One reason is control. You control the physical media. You can sell it, you can buy used games, let people borrow them, etc.
This affects less people, but there are also many who like collecting them. Physical objects are nice, especially if you've been keeping all your old games for old consoles.
Which also ties into control of course: you can still play your games, even if the companies that made them and the console no longer exist, buy old games from retro shops, buy new games for old consoles from new indie devs, etc.
> One reason is control. You control the physical media. You can sell it, you can buy used games, etc.
Unless that game ties to your account and disc becomes useless, or you game need a day 1 patch or day 412 patch or game is online or disc actually just a dummy that lets you download the game. Yes, the (in)convince of physical media totally worth it just so can sell what I got for $40/60/70 for $4 store credit at gamestop. All to have less control than I have from digital download from steam or GOG on PC.
Because Sony and all digital publishers with the exception of GOG are lying thieves. This is just another step in getting rid of ownership, and we are too naive and passive to stand up against it. Physical copies are a must to retain any sense of ownership over purchased games. If this is done, it must be forbidden to show "Purchase" on playstation store as that implies ownership,which it will never be. Also just look at the parallel issue that happened exactly these days with Sony deleting purchased movies from libraries. The same will happen with games. This is legalized theft.
I saw a photo of Destiny 2 for same at Walmart. First, game is Free-to-Play for years now, second version of a game that is on that disc cannot be played.
Tell me how does physical disc protect ownership? Then compare it to my digital downloads in steam where I can just copy game files between computers (if it's DRM-free)
> Also just look at the parallel issue that happened exactly these days with Sony deleting purchased movies from libraries. The same will happen with games.
I don't think Sony is much to blame here. They lost rights to distribute that content, so they can't distribute it. Blame copyright laws, not Sony.
How were they allowed to "sell" those titles in the first place then? Because it was never implied that access might be lost or restricted,it was very much sold to customers,not rented.
As for Destiny not working,this is a related but different problem, stopkillinggames tries to tackle it, but both issues go hand in hand.
1. If we give up physical copies,we lose ownership,as simple as that
2. Server side components must be released by the publisher once they take offline a game, as long as that game was "sold" to the customer
So ownership is a very important component in this, don't make it sound absurd.
If the console is diskless, it will be the last console I ever buy from that company. Sucks to say that about Sony but this is an incredibly out of touch move, that will always linger in the back of gamers minds that it could be tried again in the future if rolled back.
Disc consoles are superior in nearly every way:
- Disc consoles also have a hard drive, best of both worlds.
- You own the physical game. You don't own the digital version, just a license to it, which can be revoked, and deleted.
- You can trade games in 2 seconds.
- People can collect and play hundreds of games over the years on an moments notice, not waiting to download something. Games do try to compete to have the most of the players time, but it's not how all gamers play.
- Patches are normal for all games, and patches are usually smaller sizes than the entire game.
- Vintage is kind of popular now. None of those vintage systems, the original PS1/2/3/4 or Nintendos would be able to be experienced easily or at all if the physical media still didn't exist and survive. Digital platforms disappear when the system is EOL. Emulators can help, but it's a specialty and niche crowd. Handing a Nintendo to kids is something else.
- some games change with updates (try to play destiny 2 red war story line with your physical disc that you can still buy for some reason despite game being free)
- Nintendo can block specific cartridges (only thing that step Xbox and PS from doing that now is that it's not implemented on their end)
- some games have separate online pass and/or DLC codes that can only activated once
- on PC CDs used to come with a cd-key you had to activate (still do?)
- See Xbox One 2013 DRM plan
Only way to "own" a game is to have a pirated version of a game regardless of a platform.
That means that when the PS8 rolls around, any games you've bought for the digital-only PS6 will be unplayable, so think about that when you buy digital games when that (and for PS5 now) comes through.
to be fair, the "awkward snap-on disc drive" on ps5 isn't really awkward -- it's a one time install and is now indistinguishable from a built-in drive.
Long live independent physical game market. We already see people with 3d printed carts, designing labels and making their own homebrew games for retro consoles. Some people are also producing their own big box PC games for the hell of it.
As I continue to largely ignore AAA & mainstream gaming companies I look forward to how the indie gaming market takes advantage of everyone's growing nostalgia for physical ownership of games.
From a business perspective, I understand this. The physical games sections of most retailers are pitiful these days - take a walk down the PS5 aisle in Target or Best Buy for example. They also have a need to shore up margins if they want to keep subsidizing the hardware during the component crisis. And their biggest competitor, XBox, is in the process of pivoting out of their current pivot and apparently is about to layoff a massive chunk of its workforce.
But at the end of the day, part of what makes a console a console to me is the ability to swap games with friends. If I can't do that easily, why wouldn't I just use Steam?
Imho this is no issue, as long as the game is playable after download without some kind of server or account.
The moment you need an account or server to play you don't own the game. I think governments should step in here. They must force stores to use words like rent or lease instead of buy. That way it is way more clear where you are going to spend money on.
My household has been tied to the gaming industry in some form for decades. We’ve owned at least one of every console and handheld during that time, and a myriad of games for each. Collectors Editions, physical copies, digital if there was no other way or it was on sale.
We all agreed that we’re done with this. Nintendo gets a pass for making physical carts, but we’re done with paying full price to rent content in general. That also means no PS6, no Xbox-Whateverthefuck, and avoiding Game Key Cards where possible on Switch 2 (or buying them used).
If it’s not on GOG or Itch.io free of DRM, or there’s no physical copy available for sale, then we’ll wait for a deep discount on Steam or use our family library instead.
Some libraries let you borrow Playstation video games. I wonder if those libraries will have access to a system that allows people to borrow digital video games.
I guess this resource is relevant to the topic at hand. It lists games and whether you can play and complete them fully from disc without an internet connection
what will happen when in 10 years they will want to discontinue those games? will they be hosting them forever?
how are we going to preserve all the videogames production from 2028 on?
The unfortunate thing is that there actually already is a government mechanism for this, in the US at least, but it's been lobbied against by the industry [0]. So like, there already is a way to do this, the same way that libraries are allowed to preserve copies of every book, but the video game industry blocks it from happening.
They aren't competing with Steam. The console market is a closed cabal where console makers sell the machine at a loss and make up for it with locked down software where publishers pay a significant proportion of the sales to the console maker, who controls supply and dealflow with private contracts.
Oh man, I had forgotten about GTA 6 releasing on Playstation earlier than PC's. So all the hype around GTA 6 and the fact that people have been waiting for so long would drive up the demand of newer playstations and with all the 4 changes that I talked about in one of my other comments[0]
> No physical disc + shutting down online stores + deleting movies from customers accounts + dynamic pricing.
This basically becomes a sunk cost fallacy, both in buying the games or subscription models.
Because there are people who want a game so badly and want to play on release date and that game has partnered up with a console company that they will only release (first) on some consoles with the 4 factors discussed above. It leads to an incredible sunk-cost fallacy which somewhat capitalizes on the fact of the hype of the game and they are looking for any and every ways to capitalize on it for as long as possible.
I imagine some Playstation subscription yearly discount might also happen near the launch of GTA 6 so that they could tie users up to an yearly subscription perhaps.
So physical disc production is ending for new games on Playstation.
At the same time, as @outervale has said: they are shutting down PS3 and PS Vita online stores as well.
AND at the same time as @zache has said & previous discussions about PlayStation Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts.
WHILE at the same time, Dynamic pricing[0] is occuring where people who buy games are charged more because PS expects them to be able to cough up more money from my understanding
Combining all of this: No physical disc + shutting down online stores + deleting movies from customers accounts + dynamic pricing.
These might basically just be planned obsolence devices while trying to extract as much profits as humanly possible from your wallets.
I remember the dynamic pricing debate and that some people were somewhat tolerable of that, but I think that being tolerable of that is what is causing more and more precedents and an overall situation has occur where things are just increasingly more actively consumer-hostile.
This is another opportunity for the EU to reign in and create a proper definition of ownership so that this does not pass.
Of course, it would be interesting to hear the freemarketeering on this site and how people should "vote with their wallet" and sites/movements such as $freeplaystation.whatever sprouting pseudopolemic nonsense.
One huge downside for this is allowing kids to understand how things work.
A digital delivery world does not teach the same way as children learning to put a DVD into a player, hitting play, and understanding how things get somewhere.
Physical game disks, were also about community, gathering.
This is surprising because Sony obsessed over the isolation it was creating when it released the walkman.
> A digital delivery world does not teach the same way as children learning to put a DVD into a player, hitting play, and understanding how things get somewhere.
What did putting a disc in disc reader thought you?
> This is surprising because Sony obsessed over the isolation it was creating when it released the walkman.
And they have the only online storefront on PlayStation, therefore 2nd-hand market is gone. So what is surprising here?
Good point about the second-hand market disappearing digitally, if anything it might renew efforts to jailbreak consoles.
The disc is a step along the way, from record players, to reels, to cassettes, to video tapes, to discs.
Instead of experiencing changes forward, it can be experienced step by step backwards.
Much like Gen Z are rediscovering the 90's, along with single use devices, music players, dedicated cameras, etc, and hopefully remember some people got to experience it as their real present life.
The sad thing is that the knee jerk reaction here is going to be “omg just vote with your wallet, don’t buy”
But the truth is it’s bullshit and this attitude that companies should be able to do whatever they want because it’s a free market is getting so tiresome
Clearly there is agreement that things can be taken too far - as soon as one single consumer protection/anti competitive/monopoly preventing law exists, you’ve admitted those types of laws are needed
So then you’re only arguing about degrees and companies shouldn’t be allowed to do shit that harms consumers this way
On the surface this seems reasonable - it’s inevitable - discs aren’t going to hang around forever
But this goes back to what it means to own something and we’re all being relegated to serfs who don’t own shit
You wanna get rid of discs? Fine, but give me an alternative so that I still own what I buy and can resell it at will
This is ridiculous, and not long after they've been updating their ToS to require you to sign in and phone home in order to continue to be allowed access to your digital library.
> In response to shifting trends in consumer preference.
I hate this corporate speak. If buying isn't ownership, then pirating isn't stealing.
Even more reason to call this out, they know the exact figures they need to create physical copies of, they're claiming a complete trend to reduce their expenses. I don't believe they have some agenda to simply turn off games for people for no reason, but needing to check in every few months to keep a game active is actively hostile to the customer.
> If buying isn't ownership, then pirating isn't stealing.
You're not buying a game, you're buying a license to play the game. If you don't agree with the terms, don't buy that license, but that doesn't mean you're entitled to commit copyright infringement.
If I buy a movie ticket, that means I get to watch the movie once. That's the agreement.
There's an expectation that once the sale is finalised they should t be able to just take it back when they like. Agreements or not that's not how things are supposed to work.
> If I buy a movie ticket, that means I get to watch the movie once. That's the agreement.
Good thing I don't recognise copyright. Can't infringe on that which does not exist. I'm sick of pretending it does good in the world when I constantly see its consequences are things like this.
> If I buy a movie ticket, that means I get to watch the movie once. That's the agreement.
Given the amount of agreements out there that have unfair terms from the get go, or are otherwise Darth Vadered, why should anyone care what deal the corps give you?
If you don't like the deal, don't take it. It doesn't matter if you recognize copyright, it's the law. Some people don't recognize speed limits; that doesn't always end well for them.
On pc there is some competition at least between Steam, epic, gog (the odd one out but I like it) and such. I have no interest in buying a vendor specific computer with only one storefront and no competition.
But those are still digital-only platforms, with a chance of them disappearing. Epic is the biggest risk there, I think.
GoG is an interesting case though, it has loads of games that by and large were available on physical media, but because said physical media is either gone, broken, or in the hands of collectors, getting a physical copy of those games is difficult now. Them being a digital platform re-enables people to play these games.
GoG is also DRM free, so if GoG dies it's not like you'll lose access to your games. Even if you lose the files, archives will exist. Plus, if you're really that morally opposed to file sharing, you can always put it on a NAS or flash drive. Heck, put it on a bluray if you want to
Plus GOG allow people to download games and store them on a hard drive.
UT99 can't be bought anymore (though I think Epic now allow people to share it freely), but I can still download it (for now), and access my archived copy.
It's important to note that that vendor specific computer is 1) cheaper then a PC that can play equivalent games, and 2) much more reliable (i never have to mess with drivers, updates just work, etc...)
I own several computers, and I use them for work. Running games on them means either running windows or running an emulation layer, and both solutions are unreliable messes. High end graphics cards are generally very expensive and have required binary-blobs that are really hard to troubleshoot, and (in my experience) always have problems.
If I want to play a video game, I turn on my PlayStation and it just works and I don't have to think about it or troubleshoot anything. This has not been my experience with PC gaming.
I exclusively play on Fedora if on pc and the only problem I had up to now was with the ps5 controller and some weird rumble input. That was easily fixed with some googling.
Sidenote but why do you use a PS5 controller? I can understand if someone already has a console they'd prefer to use the controllers they already have, but I see so many PC gamers go out and buy a playstation or xbox controller when they want a controller when 8bitdo is right there and much better for the price
Not everyone wants to do research for every little purchase. XBox and PS controllers are likely to be at least good enough, if not the baseline of quality. A few weeks ago I got an XBox-compatible third party controller with Hall effect sticks, and while it's mostly alright, I found a weird issue where when I enter a specific mode in one game by holding the right trigger I have to have the stick centered or it doesn't register for about a second. This doesn't happen with MS's controller, and I have no idea how the input device can be causing something so specific.
I don't buy every game on a physical disc—I don't see the point for live service games, for example—but I do have a fairly large collection of physical PS5 games because I like that assurance that I can continue to play that game forever. I guess what we see here is that after 2028 I have no reason to own a PlayStation ever again.
Now Sony can take away your entire game collection at any time. If you get flagged by some random AI system and your account gets flagged you can kiss goodbye to hundreds of dollars worth of games you have.
I used to think this was bad, but honestly? It’s just games. Some people buy tons of digital games they literally never even play. If they were physical games, imagine all the e-waste.
And what’s the point of physical games? So you can play the game in 30 years from now on some retro console you’ve diligently maintained?
Get over it, you’re not going to do any of that. There’s no mythical third act where you go through some library of physical CDs and reminisce about an old ass game. There’s constantly new games coming out all the time, you will just keep buying and buying games, you play them for a bit, and then you move on. It’s not “buy it for life”, it’s buy it for right now have fun and move on. Live in the present, don’t worry about the future.
Even people who have retro consoles and collect physical copies seem to mostly do it for collector purposes. When they die, their kids will send all that to a dump or pawn it off. Pointless.
There are a ton of amazing games that people still enjoy today that would be essentially impossible to get ahold if they were only available through DRM'd digital downloads. I agree the physical media is more of a nostalgia thing in principle, but a) that doesn't make people's enjoyment of that part invalid, and b) it's not a like-for-like, because digital downloads on the whole do not allow the resale that physical media does, nor apart from some notable exceptions do they even guarantee continued access to the game. I feel like what you're saying here is implying that there is no value at all in older games and you would rather people stop enjoying them.
I agree with most of this, which is why emulation is generally better unless you specifically want to operate/show off a museum.
Maybe things will be like the Nintendo BS-X where people will reverse engineer consoles with games downloaded to extract the game from it.
That being said I do have a physical Atari 2600 with a few games. Astroblast with paddles is still a fun game today, and Video Olympics (the Atari VCS version of Pong) is extremely fun to bring out at parties.
the Atari 2600 is probably my favorite console to collect for. The games cost next to nothing and old games like that are fun to just grab a stack of and play each game for 5-10 minutes each
I'm sorry, is that it? Have you ever seen how a collection looks like? They have a lot of charm as well.
Once they used to be even better because they'd come with manuals, posters, and more inside the case, but unfortunately they already took that away from us...
>There’s no mythical third act where you go through some library of physical CDs and reminisce about an old ass game.
Huh? You won't replay every game, sure, but once in a while you'll find a game that you keep coming back to even many years after first playing it. The last time I played Pokémon Red all the way through was only a few years ago. I have permanent Deus Ex, Crysis, FEAR, and Duke Nukem 3D installations on my hard drive, so I can run them for a bit whenever I feel like. Maybe once you put down a game you never pick it again, but don't assume what is true of you is true of everybody.
If you enjoyed something as a much younger person, and enjoy it as a much older person, it is very unlikely that it is the thing itself that you are enjoying. To test it, you can try giving that thing to someone your age and see if they enjoy it (they will most likely think it's a nuisance). To experience it yourself, you can try what kids are into these days or even better try something that people used to like long before you were born, in which case you will very likely see these things as pointless quite quickly. If you observe these things, it is easy to see that nostalgia is enjoyable because it is about associating your youth and naiveté with the object of nostalgia. If you grew up, you would see that it is just some distraction that merchants brought to you to profit from your stupidity. If you realize this, you'll enjoy not having to deal with that shit a lot more.
Your enjoyment isn’t pure in the sense you genuinely enjoy the thing for what it is.
You enjoy it mostly because you’ve enjoyed it once before.
Regardless, it is not even an argument for physical media, you don’t even have physical copies of these old games, and even if you did, holding the physical copy wouldn’t add anything to your experience besides a bit of novelty.
>To experience it yourself, you can try what kids are into these days
What do you mean? I'll try anything if I think it will appeal to me, but I don't know any children to ask what they're into to conduct this experiment.
>or even better try something that people used to like long before you were born, in which case you will very likely see these things as pointless quite quickly.
Like how long? I like classical music. I don't really like theater. I read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and liked it; I read Martín Fierro and hated it. What conclusion do we draw from all this?
>If you observe these things, it is easy to see that nostalgia is enjoyable because it is about associating your youth and naiveté with the object of nostalgia.
No, I don't agree. I don't agree that I derive nostalgic enjoyment from the examples I gave previously. I think that I can enjoy them because they're familiar things that I can engage with as a matter of routine. I can enjoy them for the same reason I biked to work through the same route for over ten years straight without getting bored. Someone completely new cannot derive that same routinary enjoyment. For example, DOOM is basically just as old as Duke Nukem 3D, but I only played it many years later, and so I never finished it (but I also don't think I would have liked it as much back in the day; the gameplay is just not as good. I should try other Build games to see how they compare).
As another example, I should definitely feel nostalgia for Saint Seiya, but I tried multiple times just couldn't get through it. It's just for children, an adult can't miss the obvious plot holes. But I saw The Lion King in the theater and then dozens of times on VHS, and then dozens more times off my NAS 20+ years later, and loved it every time -- as an adult I just could better understand why it was so good.
>If you grew up
You're asking to be told off.
>you would see that it is just some distraction that merchants brought to you to profit from your stupidity. If you realize this, you'll enjoy not having to deal with that shit a lot more.
I don't "deal with" the things I like. I like them. Engaging with them is not something I'm forced to do that I have to cope with. Are you an alien? What do you do for fun? Stack rocks on the beach? Or is fun a foreign concept to you?